How to Choose the Right Letterbox For Your Home

If you're a bit confused as to how to find the right letterbox for your home, don't worry, you've come to the right place. Heatlie Letterboxes are the letterbox specialists and are prepared to help in any way we can to make your experience as easy as possible. There's a lot to cover so let's get under way. 

Standards and Regulations

The first and foremost thing you need to make sure of is that any letterbox you buy adheres to the letterbox regulations of your local council and Australia Post. Aus post posties can be fairly vigilant in enforcing their regulations, so don't get on their bad side. 

These regulations usually just revolve around making life as easy as possible for the postie. This means keeping your letterbox visible, accessible and in good condition. 

Style

Style is a broad term and covers a lot of the other topics explained in this post. What we mean here is that the general feel and design of the letterbox should match well with your home's design and style. Heatlie Letterboxes offers both classic designs such as the Kooyonga and modern designs like the Pillar.

Classic

Modern

While its true that a modern letterbox might do an older house some good, the opposite is generally not true. If your house is somewhere in between, you might have the luxury of being able to choose either.

Materials

The material of your letterbox is one thing you don't have a whole lot of control over. At Heatlie Letterboxes we make all our letterboxes out of a high quality aluminium, which is then powder coated with a heavy duty coating in the colour of your choice. This makes them extremely weather resistant and durable against rust and corrosion. Where you live has a big impact on the materials you should be looking for. If you're down by the ocean you'll want stainless steel or aluminium that won't rust and corrode as badly as plain steel. 

Mounting

How you mount your letterbox depends on the layout of your front yard and the available space.

Freestanding

Freestanding letterboxes are ideal for yards with wide open spaces and a direct connection to the footpath.

All freestanding letterboxes come default for ground installation. This means they will have a straight post that can be inserted into a hole and filled in with cement.

If you require a post that can be bolted to concrete please contact us. 

Built-In

On the other hand you have built in letterboxes. Our Superior and Telescopic letterboxes can be built into just about any kind of fence or wall. Superiors are generally better for fences of any variety such as picket, tubular, sheet metal, brush and more. On the other hand if you have a brick or rendered wall out the front, a Telescopic box can be adjusted to suit the depth of the wall.    

Multibanks

Heatlie Letterboxes also offers multibank letterboxes. These are great for duplexes, businesses or unit blocks looking for a unified look to their letterboxes. Multibanks can either be mounted on posts in the ground or bolted onto concrete, or they can be built onto or into a wall. 

Multibank on posts in ground

Posts bolted to concrete

Size

The size of your letterbox can have a impact on how natural it looks in your front yard. Although the sizes don't vary that drastically, it can still make a difference. For example if you are going for a freestanding letterbox, our Kooyonga is a rather big chunky letterbox and may not look at home in a particularly small front yard with a small house. You'd be better off with a Vandal Resist or an Ultimo that aren't as imposing. 

Size is also important depending on how much mail you expect to receive and the size of the mail. If you regularly get large A4 mail, a bigger letterbox might be a better option. All our letterboxes will easily allow for an A4 sheet of paper to go through the mail slot comfortably and lay flat in the bottom. This is to ensure no mail gets damaged.

Colour

This is our time to shine. We powder coat in house and have access to a huge range of Colorbond® powder coat colors and can apply any of them to any letterbox. This allows you to find that perfect colour to match or compliment your home and front yard. 

Colorbond® range

These are just a few of the colours available to us, and being the most popular they're the only ones we have on the website. 

It's generally good practice to match your letterbox colour to the colour of the trim on your house. Trim, as in the window frames, gutters or garage doors. That way it's not a colour overload like it might be if you made it the same colour as the brick or render. 

Numbering

Whether or not you place the numbers on your letterbox is up to you. Some decide to place them elsewhere like on the wall around the letterbox if it's built in, or with a completely separate signage plate. Our numbers can be either bolted on in gold, silver, black or stainless steel, or they can be stuck on as vinyl in the same colours. We also offer waterjet cutting on custom faceplates. 

     Gold bolted on numbers

Faceplates

Speaking of custom faceplates, we offer a selection of preset designs that can be customised to your liking.

Our faceplates come in either stainless steel or aluminium powder coated and can have your street name and number cut out in a range of different fonts. You can then have a backing plate in a powder coated colour for that extra colour pop. 

Features

Letterboxes can have a range of extra features added on. Some can have mail rings for non-fragile mail like catalogues, some can ward that kind of thing away with a "NO JUNK MAIL" sticker. These are the extracurricular items that don't really make or break the letterbox but are nice to have. 

Decision time

That's a lot of information to take in we know, but when you break it all down it can start to become clearer. If you're ever in need of a hand, give us a call or drop into our showroom if you're in the area. Our helpful sales staff will guide you through the whole process. At the end of the day, you'll come out the other side with a quality, Australian made letterbox that will sit proudly in your front yard for many years to come.