Backyards with pools are distinguished by a central hub of entertainment that draws people with many different interests.  While everyone may not want to get in the water, most people will find something to enjoy in the pool area. 

Some will want to sit on outdoor furniture and relax while they watch their friends swim and play in the water.  Others will want to mingle on the patio for drinks and food.  This centralization of activity often proves the launching point for other activities by introducing aesthetic themes that repeat throughout the landscape.

Backyards with pools often have more sophisticated hardscape design due to the predominance of the swimming pool patio.  A large percentage of pools are located to the side or rear of the home.  In such a location, they occupy prime transition area from the home to the rest of the property.  Developing a hardscape theme in this area creates structure and form that can then be extended and repeated in other parts of the yard.

Walkways, for example, are an excellent way to connect the pool area to other points of interest.  A walkway can consist of the same materials as those used in pool patio design.   It can also feature very unique designs.  It does not necessarily have to be a solid, contiguous surface. 

Many walkways are actually built out of stepping stones that leave room for some vegetation around their edges.  This is one of many ways to transition pool and patio design into softscape design without abandoning the complex geometries that have already been established.

A backyard with a pool, patio, and network of walkways creates more than a hub of entertainment and a network for human traffic.  The varying patterns established by the hardscape patterns form something of a backbone structure for lighting design.  Placing pathway areas along a transit area at night often does more than illuminate its surface material.  It can also make it look like one is walking through light itself. 

This effect can be expanded outward into gardens, shrubs, and trees to create an interconnected network of up lighting and down lighting.  Many people often fail to realize just how important landscape lighting is, and how important it is, until they host a party in their backyard and realize that more than half their property lies obscured in shadow.

Pool lighting, of course, is very much an integral part of landscape lighting.  It magnifies the unique aesthetic of water itself with a prominence uniquely its own.  A backyard with a pool offers more opportunity to continue this effect throughout the landscape in other water features. 

Custom fountains, natural ponds, streams, and waterfalls can all be illuminated in the same fashion.  Bear in mind, however, that a well-lit swimming pool will help better tie these separate water features to the architecture of the house. 

Because the pool’s geometry will directly reflect the architecture of the home, illuminating its interior adds a sense of definite form to water’s unique fluidity.  Other water features may not have such sharp, recognizable geometry.  However, if they are illuminated in a manner similar to that of the pool, then the illusion that they are somehow linked to its design can be optically generated.

These examples show just a few ways that backyards with pools can contribute to home entertainment.  The curb appeal of any property that is distinguished by this level of professional landscape design is almost certain to rise due to the quality of outdoor living it by nature represents.

•  Offer a central place for entertainment
•  Enhance curb appeal if pool is built to scale and scope of landscape and home
•  Set themes for hardscape design
•  Walkways, sidewalks, like a hub for connection
•  Establish a theme for water features
•  Fountains
•  Ponds
•  Waterfalls
•  Also establish lighting themes