Creating Outdoor Rooms
By Charles Morris
Bringing the familiar indoor spaces of our homes out into the landscape is a great way to increase your living space and with successful landscape design this can be achieved in a number of ways. Most often, people are too confined into the normal indoor spaces that we typically think of when relaxing at home. These living spaces, whether they are a living room with television, kitchen, or dining room can all be brought out into the landscape. With the use of lighting, plants, hardscape materials, furniture, among other elements these outdoor spaces can often feel relaxing, unique, comforting, and useful.
In order to obtain an effective design it is very important to tune into the key desires and uses for these spaces that you may have. It is also important to feed off of the existing natural landscape forms and functions. A landscape can have destination points that a person will be drawn towards. Decks, Patios, Pools, Fire pits, spas, and etc are perfect examples of these destination points that can then turn into the outdoor rooms. To separate the “rooms” walls, fencing, plantings, pergolas and other structures can help to delineate use as well as add visual texture to the site and a feeling of comfort.
A “living room” can be achieved through variety of furniture on a stone patio or deck to create a lounging area on a hot sunny day or under shade with a pergola overhead. Add a fire feature to create a focal point, and this becomes a new place to talk with family, roast marshmallows, and share stories. Ground plane materials, or “outdoor flooring,” such as decking, gravel, stone, or even outdoor carpeting create the base for the outdoor spaces. The “living room” can now be connected to a “dining room” with table and chairs to serve the family and guests; surrounded by lush vegetation and lighting, this space now feels soft and welcoming. Add a water feature into the space for tranquility and a pleasant sound. The “Kitchen” can have a combination of many appliances much like that of an interior kitchen. There are outdoor refrigerators, sinks, cabinet systems, bar style components, among others just to name a few. A large grill or brick oven can transform the room into a functional area to cook and prepare meals. According to the American Society of Landscape Architects adding a vegetable/kitchen garden is a reemerging trend with 1 in 5 residential landscape architects replacing part or all of grass lawns to include this feature. Lighting in these “rooms” can be both functional and aesthetic, used to highlight specific areas, create soft natural glow into the vegetation, or accentuate a water feature or focal point.
With each destination point in the rooms it’s not only important to draw a person into the space, but also keep them in the space because that is what will make a successful design. Together with these outdoor “rooms” comfort, function, appreciation, and unique characteristics the outdoor landscape can now take the place of the interior of the house, transforming your normal living space into the “guesthouse.”