Do Your Neighbours Paint Their Lawns Green? Increasingly, Yes

GILBERT, Ariz.—Mike Landers enjoys taking his dog, Luci, for walks along the lush communal grass in the Islands, the master-planned neighbourhood where he lives. This year, the grass looks particularly verdant. It’s been painted.

“Could you tell? It looks like green grass,” said Mr. Landers, who is 69, and came from Minnesota, adding that Luci doesn’t seem to mind.

Creating a green lawn has long been considered artistry, and perhaps now more than ever: More people are turning to paint.

In just moments, wilting, yellowing grass suddenly looks like it belongs on the fairways of St. Andrews. Painted lawns are becoming more popular as inflation-strained households try to save money, drought complicates water usage and severe storms have brought ice and freezing rain to swaths of the South, turning lawns a blah brown. This niche business sector has grown, well, like weeds, with lots of landscapers, professional training and an array of shades to choose from.

Not everyone is a fan of painted grass. “I don’t like it. It’s wintertime, it should be brown,” said Don Ossian, 65, another resident of the Islands community, who is originally from Iowa. He said his dog, Jedidiah, got green paint on his paws.

Mr. Ossian’s dog’s walk could have been poorly timed. Tim Gavelek, who sells the turf colorant to the landscaping company that works at the Islands, said paint dries within a few hours and is safe for pets.

While Mr. Gavelek’s lawn-care company, Fertizona, has been selling green lawn paint for a decade, he said he is getting far more calls this year from landscaping companies, homeowner associations and residents curious about painting, in an effort to cut down on expenses and save water.

In Arizona there have been no limits on outdoor water usage in residential areas, unlike California. But cities such as Gilbert and Phoenix have warned restrictions could come if drought worsens. Scottsdale is trying to get residents to switch out lawns with water-saving landscaping by offering rebates.

Nick Perez, the representative at landscaping company BrightView who negotiated the contract with the Islands, said the neighbourhood was looking to save, but wanted to keep up lawn appearances. “They want lush,” he said.

At the Islands, BrightView sprayed 17 acres with an emerald colour made to look like golf courses. The move is estimated to save the community $70,000 in water costs that would have kept the grass naturally green, according to Mr. Perez. The Islands declined to comment.

Painting can cut down on water usage because grass doesn’t need to be alive. Dormant grass, that dry yellow stuff that shows up once the lawn stops being watered or is unhappy with temperature, can hang onto paint.

Brian Howland, 53, who paints yards in the Phoenix area part-time with his son, said you can get a dormant lawn to look realistic with paint, for an average cost of $250 to $350. The only problem is, it doesn’t feel as good as it looks.

People say “ ‘Wow the yard looks amazing’ and you take a step and it goes ‘crunch,’ ” he said.

Mr. Howland switched paints after testing out a brand that left some lawns blue after the yellow pigment burned off in the sun.

In Houston, Ruben Alonso, 43, and his son Ru, 21, started a mowing business, Alawnso Services, after Mr. Alonso was laid off during the pandemic. Then a client asked to have his lawn painted, and Mr. Alonso branched into that, doing 100 lawn-painting jobs in the winter of 2022 and now keeping up a busy pace. He says he has trained at least 20 other people to start similar businesses.

His teenage daughter, Jenavi, posted a TikTok of an early job featuring Mr. Alonso painting the grass as the background voice debates if people will be able to spot a fake. The video took off once he began interacting with his audience and views now total 3.7 million. He thinks people get satisfaction watching something go from “ugly to pretty,” though he said a way for a video to go viral is to post a mistake, such as paint splashing onto a sidewalk.

“People love commenting that you got paint on a piece of wood, on the wall,” he said. Even though the father-son duo are much more experienced now, Mr. Alonso said he’ll still occasionally lean in and post a video of a mishap, thinking, “Let me just throw them a bone.”

Geoponics Corp. makes popular pigments including “Fairway,” a dark green that it says has a “see it from the moon” effect and “Perennial Rye,” inspired by golf courses of Augusta, Ga. Brad Driggers, a sales manager, travels the country helping paint users understand the correct mixing ratios. He said landscaping companies or golf course turf managers may use tractors with long attachments to spray big areas, while a person at home could use a gallon jug with a small attachment.

“We have a very good product but the application is half the battle…if it’s not applied right then it’s not gonna look right,” he said. “We don’t want anybody to know it’s painted.”

Ozzie Sattler, 70, a retired radio broadcaster in Phoenix, gets his lawn professionally painted in summer, sometimes shocking his neighbors. “Because one day it’ll be yellow and the next day it’s green,” he said.

The world of sports has long engaged in lawn painting for aesthetics. When you turn on TV to watch a golf tournament or football game, you’re often looking at painted grass. TPC Scottsdale, the course that held the Waste Management Phoenix Open in February, was painted to enhance and protect the blades for what has been nicknamed “the Greenest Show on Grass,” said Brandon Reese, director of agronomy at TPC. (Professional ice rinks are also painted white.)

Some homeowners paint their lawns green to satisfy neighbourhood critics. Who needs a green thumb if you’ve got green paint?

Jenn Poist, 46, a YouTube content creator who posts under the name Raptor Adventures says neighbours in Spring Hill, Fla., were bugging her about what they deemed a lawn unworthy of the neighbourhood.

Ms. Poist didn’t want to add chemicals or fertilisers to her lawn over fear of harming wild animals. She bought a nontoxic green spray paint.

“That’s a good alternative because it will get them off our back,” she said.

David Steele, 73, a retiree from Phoenix, started painting his lawn with the intention of turning it into a local business, but he quickly realised pigment couldn’t save a bad yard and scaled back his ambitions.

Mr. Steele said a lawn needs to be prepared before it can be painted for best results. Some clients started asking him to remove weeds and mow their lawns first. He said he didn’t want to end up as a landscaper. Now, he paints only for friends and family who have well-maintained yards to start with.

“I’m very particular. The canvas has to be nice or you just don’t get the results that someone else may expect,” Mr. Steele said.

Still, he’s not perfect and keeps a rag in his pocket and Windex nearby in case any paint gets onto the sidewalk. A little dab and it’s all cleared up.

—Louise Radnofsky and Natalie Andrews contributed to this article.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.