Custom Patios

Many Houston residents have come to want more than just a typical patio where friends can sit around the swimming pool. They want a custom patio that has been designed to accommodate the functions of entertainment, recreation, and relaxation. Custom patios are typically built either behind a home or alongside of a home on larger estates, although a few very large estates with walled properties may also have them in the front yard. Regardless of the exact location of the hardscape, the ruling principle is to build a custom patio that will reflect the function and nature of specific events, and whose material build and physical form compliment home architecture and surrounding landscape features.

Traditionally, patios have either been stone, concrete, or wooden seating areas adjacent to a pool or some other center of activity. In custom design, however, the patio itself can become the center of activity. Space requirements and anticipated activities must then be factored into custom patio design as variables. When we work with a new client, we take a great deal of time during the consultation and planning phase to get a feel for what types of outdoor events they may be planning to host at their home. Such factors as the number of guests, the nature of the gathering, and what adjoining structure the patio itself is meant to be a part of all play critical roles in determining both the materials used to build it and the actual physical shape it will ultimately take.
Such a systematic approach to custom design allows us to build a patio in or around virtually any area of significant interest in your yard. Many times our clients want us to build special seating or gathering areas near their favorite fountains or gardens so guests can enjoy the aesthetic of these elements at close range and have the ambience they create actually define the experience of the event. Other clients may ask us to build a custom patio in a remote portion of the yard which serves as their own personal, exclusive, and private retreat during early morning and late evening hours. Still others seek to create an atmosphere of outdoor revelry and extravaganza where the most complex and ostentatious of outdoor structures are magnified by a surrounding hardscape design that both attracts and maintains the interest of the crowd.

We do a great deal of this type of construction around a number of special outdoor structures that represent an indoor living turned inside out. Outdoor fire places and fire pits are two great examples of this. Based upon the ancient principles of hearth and home, these symbolic invoke both connotations of historical living space and images of a warm, refined modern living room. By constructing these structures outside, in the yard, then building a custom patio around them, we can unify the experiential, the symbolic, and the Natural all into a new synthesis.

Custom patios can also be built in front of outdoor kitchens and arbors to provide an extended space connected to the interiors of these structures. Once again, letting function define the form allows not only for such an extension of space, but a combining of spaces with other areas of interest. A custom patio can link the space between a garden and an arbor, or a pool or an outdoor kitchen, giving people a path to walk on, a floor to mingle on, and a seating area to comfortably gather around for conversation—all rolled into one. Other locations where we commonly build custom patios include entrance gardens that line the side walls of multi-story homes on larger estates, and ornate lighted fountain areas that can act as centerpieces and focal points for late night gatherings.

Landscape architects use only the best materials in building custom patios and take the time to make certain that the plans they develop for the hardscape ultimately mesh with the organic and architectural elements of the property. They also make certain that home architecture and surrounding structural designs are respected and complimented by the design, materials, and size of the patio itself.