Outdoor Living Space Ideas
Every homeowner wishes to replicate the same beautiful indoor ambiance on the outside. If designing an outdoor space for you and your loved ones to sit back, relax, and have a good time is on your wish list, this post shares outdoor spaces ideas guaranteed to transform your backyard into a habitable oasis.
From simple acts like adding greenery to installing pathways and play spots, the final transformation is sure to meet and exceed your expectations. So without further ado, let’s go straight into it.
Add Greenery
Adding greenery is a home outdoor décor idea that never goes out of style. If you’re creating a backyard from nothing but dirt, green plants will add life to your space and improve its overall appearance. But where do you start? Here are a few ways to maximize the magic of green plants:
Grow Grass
Growing grass is the first step to creating a backyard from scratch. But before you can begin planting your ideal grass, you must know the following:
- Soil PH – Test your backyard’s soil PH to determine whether it’s acidic or alkaline. Grass favors slightly acidic soils with a PH of six to seven.
- Best Seed – If you’re designing your backyard in the fall, you will need cooler-season grass, while a warmer season like summer requires warm-season grass. You can also get blended turf that survives hot and cold seasons.
- Aqua Attention – Too much or too little water can wash away or kill your grass seeds. Grass thrives in moist soil, which is easily achievable by watering it twice daily. If you have a mix of grass seeds, water them until the slowest-germinating seed species emerges.
Expect tiny signs of grass blades to appear in 10 to 14 days, though some varieties can take up to 30 days.
Plant a Garden
You can easily turn your backyard into a paradise by installing a well-thought-out garden. Like grass, climate, and soil PH plays a role in the plant types you can choose for your backyard garden. In any case, you should try to have a mix of perennials, annuals, flowering shrubs, and trees in your garden for the best chance of your garden surviving throughout the year. Also, if you’re working with limited backyard space, you can opt for vertical gardens over horizontal gardens that take up a lot of space.
Create a Path
A path inside your backyard allows anyone to stroll freely and take in the main highlights of your garden along the way. It also ties different backyard sections together and protects your garden from foot traffic.
Creating an informal path along your backyard requires a mix of materials such as pine needles, mulch, bricks, or loose stone. This kind of paving easily blends into the surrounding area, forming twists and turns that reveal the exquisite design of your landscape. You can add a bit of flair to your garden path with yard decorations like garden skates or glow-in-the-dark rocks.
Design a Space for Moving Water
Water features have a mesmerizing impact on the appearance of a backyard. Not only do they attract beautiful wildlife like birds and beneficial insects to your home, but the sound of flowing water blocks undesirable outside noises, creating a calming environment. You can install various water features, depending on water flow and the size of your yard. These include:
Fountains
Building a fountain is the best way to maximize the underground water flowing in your yard. In reality, it’s simple to design a concrete fountain than you may think. All you need is:
- A sturdy bucket or tub (with about a 15-gallon capacity)
- A fountain pump
- Tubing to direct water upwards
- A Hose clump that connects the pump to the tubing
- A rock where the pump can rest
- A heavy galvanized gauge with a diameter larger than the bucket or tub
- Around 40 lbs of rocks (round with one and a half to three diameters)
Always ensure the pump is plugged into an outdoor GFCI outlet for safety.
Streams
If your landscape has an ideal slope, size, and foundation, you can build a natural stream running through your backyard. To do this, all you need is – to find an ideal location (sloping area), dig the stream (6 to 12 inches deep), add rocks (around both edges) and install a pump to direct water downstream.
Waterfalls
You can create a backyard waterfall by directing water from your stream to an area downstream with large rocks stacked on top of each other.
Construct a Fire Pit
A backyard fire pit is an excellent outdoor living space idea, especially if you plan on hosting outdoor late-night events. Furthermore, building a fire pit isn’t expensive or overly complicated. You can complete a small fire pit in an afternoon for less than a couple hundred bucks and some manpower.
Materials needed:
- Shovel
- Level
- Metal fire pit ring
- Retaining wall blocks (about 36)
- 7″ square concrete pavers or fire brick for the bottom of the pit (we used about 15)
- About .5 cubic feet of pea gravel to fill spaces
- One bag of all-purpose sand
You can also purchase a portable backyard fireplace if you don’t want the hustle of building one. Remember to ensure your fire pit has enough space to accommodate the number of people you plan on hosting.
Setup Fun Spots
You can complete your backyard’s transformation by setting up recreational areas for kids and adults. You can build treehouses, swing sets, and jungle gyms for children, while adults could derive simple joys from quiet spaces such as hammocks, swinging tree chairs, and lawn games like bocce ball, ladder golf, croquet, and bucket ball.
Transform Your Backyard into an Oasis
These outdoor living space ideas can transform your backyard from a dull space into a fun, beautiful, and lively space. Some are easy to execute alone, while others may require professional help. If you desire to improve your backyard but have no time or capacity, we can do all the heavy lifting for you.
At Hyper Construction Inc., we provide high-quality outdoor living spaces. Our teams of experienced professionals are experts in building and designing beautiful, functional, and durable outdoor living spaces. Contact us today & we can help get you started on the right foot!
