Your outdoor living spaces should suit your family’s lifestyle as well as be an extension of your indoor living areas. Such outdoor areas should be designed to maximize their space, complement your home and lot, and be functional for the types of activities you plan to enjoy †be it for outdoor dining, entertaining, sports, child’s play, relaxing, or multi-purpose use. Dining, relaxation, and entertaining areas are best located near their corresponding indoor areas, such as living room, den, family room, kitchen. A quiet, private area may be best located outside of a den; a hot tub in a sheltered spot outside of the master bedroom, and so on. In addition to a sheltered spot near your home, such areas can be located in your backyard as a special nook. If designing with children and pets in mind, remember to plan for adequate ground cover, adequate space, and adequate visual supervision capacity from the more utilized areas of your home, i.e. the kitchen or living room. Plan your outdoor entertaining space so it offers views into the children’s outdoor area as well. Privet hedges, raised berms, stone walls, fencing, trellises, arbors, and plantings can be used for varying degrees of privacy, noise and wind buffering, and landscape enhancement. Structural and hardscape components of your outdoor living space can consist of decking, patio, pool, spa, or other water feature areas, gazebos, sheds or work areas, game and sports areas, greenhouse, or workshop. A patio sited off of a living room or family room with dimensions of at least 12 x 16 is best-suited as an outdoor extension of its complementary interior space. For quieter outdoor spaces, water features such as a natural stream, swimming pool, fountain, waterfall, small pond, or water garden can be added. Flowing water always lends a sense of tranquility while increasing the beauty of your yard. Planning for ease and circulation of traffic flow from outdoor to indoor living areas and vice versa needs to be considered. Areas of limited access, like service areas, may not be a part of this circulation pattern, but need to be functional for access. Ease of movement is paramount for indoor/outdoor entertaining areas. Plantings, gardening areas, and outdoor structural and hardscape components are also used to guide eyes and traffic flow between and among the areas they highlight or enhance. Fencing, garden beds, arbors, trellises, foundation plantings, and berms, ornamental grasses, shrubbery, paths, and walkways can be used to define the perimeters of activity areas or to separate them from one another where desired.
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