Designing Refined Spaces for Summertime Living
Designing outdoor spaces that support casually elegant summertime living involves a successful blend of functionality, aesthetics, and comfort. An environment that is both practical and inviting will ensure that family and friends will utilize the space time and time again. While there are endless ways to enhance an outdoor space, a few tried and true design elements can transform any backyard into a sophisticated and functional retreat. When creating outdoor architecture, we typically collaborate with a professional landscape architect in the development of a master site plan, which details layout and flow, landscaping and hardscaping, and pool size and orientation, among other features. This guide delves into the nuances of integrating these features into an outdoor space ideal for summertime enjoyment.
Covered & Screened Porches
The Heart of Refined Outdoor Living
Covered porches serve as the nucleus of any outdoor living area, offering a sheltered space that elegantly transitions between indoors and outdoors. They provide respite from the sun’s intensity and protection from inclement weather, ensuring usability during various weather conditions.
Through the custom design process, we ask our clients to express their goals with regards to how they entertain and the number of people that a porch needs to support. It is important to know if that area is seating six or twelve, as that will impact the depth of the porch. It is also important to have the conversation as to if the porch is a rocking chair porch in which a linear arrangement can happen, or a congregate seating group, which then requires a much deeper porch. As well, a porch can support both casual seating and dining or only one of those functions.
Entertaining Areas
Spaces for Sophisticated Socializing
The most special entertainment areas are where the inside meets the outside of a home. When you can expand the house’s indoor living or kitchen area into the “outside room,” you can embrace the views, the wind, and the smell of nature while doubling the floor area of your entertainment space. Outdoor living spaces are opportunities for introducing open fire and flowing water, creating whimsy, and introducing sounds that differ significantly from the emotions experienced inside the home.
One way to incorporate this concept is by utilizing a folding glass wall system. These systems allow the doubling of an entertainment area with easy flow across the large opening’s width. The glass walls can fold on themselves in a scissor like fashion, or they can slide and stack into a wall pocket. Where bugs prevail, a large screen can be married with the folding glass panels. Adding heaters in cold climates helps extend the porch use. Lastly, having the paved or decked floor flush with the finished floor level of the house creates the safest integration of two large open spaces.
Pool Houses
A Multifunctional Sanctuary
When imagining a traditional pool house, one might envision a practical little structure comprised of a small bathroom/changing room, pool equipment storage, and potentially a little covered seating area. Historically, the pool house’s main function has been very utilitarian, which could also make it very unexciting. However, the practical pool houses of yesterday have evolved into dreamy structures that now serve as the central hub of modern outdoor living, offering a truly full-service experience.
In addition to meeting functional requirements, today’s pool houses offer both indoor and outdoor lounge spaces with stone fireplaces, conditioned spaces with foldaway glass walls creating the ability for year-round use, full kitchen and dining spaces accommodating everything from lunch for the kids to full farm-to-table meals, built-in gourmet grilling centers with entertaining features such as pizza ovens and ceramic smokers, outdoor fire pit, and full scale bar spaces taking the form of anything from a rustic barn to a modern sports bar aesthetic. To create a truly experiential space for friends and family to gather, some pool houses are also designed to accommodate pool tables or ping pong tables, home gyms, and guest suites, and can also be supported by a bocce ball, croquet, or pickle ball court, or playground space.
Go Forth
Architectural design and interior design have a significant impact on the way we emotionally react to spaces, both indoors and outside. Our senses—what we see, feel, and touch—influence our thinking, feelings, and actions and, therefore, our entire body. Thus, one of the most important ways we can take care of ourselves is to spend time in delightful outdoor spaces that connect us to nature and help us appreciate the beauty of life.
Born and raised in Virginia, Cathy Purple Cherry ultimately landed in Annapolis where she grew a large architecture and interior design firm specializing in high-end custom homes and estates. Today, the firm has five offices—Charlottesville, VA, Middleburg, VA, Annapolis, MD, New York, NY and Washington, DC—and specializes in creating luxurious residences across the United States. A talented architect, visionary, and three-dimensional thinker, Cathy is able to marry clients’ dreams with the reality of the built environment.
Purple Cherry Architects
434-245-2211 · purplecherry.com
