Outdoor Design Ideas

When most homeowners think of outdoor design ideas their dreams are all too often limited to plants, decks, and patios.  While these are major design considerations, there are a lot of “bells and whistles” available that can greatly enhance your outdoor design.

Let’s start with the front of your home.  If you’re adding attractive shrubbery or hedge bushes along the front perimeter of your home, consider adding a stone retaining wall in front of your plantings.  Retaining wall stones are available at most garden centers and at all home improvement outlets.  They come in several attractive colors and create a dramatic and striking impact.

Another addition that’s sure to impress is landscape lighting.  Today’s wide selection of outdoor solar lights perform far better than their earlier counterparts, which required full sun for most of the day to produce bright light at night and remain lit till the wee hours of the morning.  

Using natural stone or paving block to create narrow pathways through your front lawn breaks up the boring rectangular look of a mass of green grass.  These pathways make the front of your home much more interesting and unique and can be further enhanced by adding solar lights along the path.

Turning to outdoor design ideas for your backyard living area, continue with the addition of different landscaping materials.  Again, stone retaining walls and brick paths through the lawn and flower bed areas look great.  You can make pathways even more dramatic by enclosing the stone or paving blocks or bricks within a border of treated outdoor lumber.  Stone and wood together heighten the impact of either material alone.  

Today’s enhancements in PVC composite materials make the addition of outdoor ponds within the reach of everyone.  They are less expensive than the concrete pools of old and have the added advantage of mobility should you ever desire to relocate the pond.  Water is a wonderful design element and you should also consider the many styles of portable fountains available.  These are pump operated so all you need to create the soothing sounds of flowing water is an outdoor electrical outlet.

Outdoor lighting does not need to be limited to solar pathway lighting.  Today you can buy paving lights to incorporate into your brick pathways.  Most of these require wiring to low voltage transformers, but the dramatic effect of lighting at your feet at night is well worth the effort.  

While harder to find and more expensive to purchase, the latest enhancement in outdoor lighting is fiber optic lighting.  Available in paving blocks and submersible units for use in pools and ponds, these lights are interconnected by a fiber optic cable powered at a central source.  One of their major advantages is color change.  With traditional low voltage lighting you have to change the bulb in each unit to change the mood of your lighting with the seasons.  Many homeowners like blue lighting when the seasons change.  With a fiber optic system, you only have to change the bulb at the central source.  What could be easier?