Swimming Pool Landscape Design

For a Houston landscape, a swimming pool landscape design is often the pièce de résistance. Our climate invites the presence of a pool and people are naturally drawn to it. The creativity applied to the attendant landscaping only heightens the impact. Not merely the glue that holds everything together, a pool and its landscaping are the jewels atop the crown.

Exterior Worlds offers luxury designs that take the basic elements of swimming pools and give them sophisticated élan, creating a special atmosphere for all your festive occasions. Our swimming pool landscape designs allow you to move seamlessly from the interior to the exterior with the pool area functioning as a continuation of your living space. Because it serves as this linkage, it is imperative that the swimming pool design properly complement the architecture of your house. Our professional landscape designers will help you achieve all the prerequisite demands.

There’s even good news for homeowners of older residences with pools designed and built in, say, the 70s and 80s. If you’ve been looking with desire at the latest shelter magazines with their exquisite spreads of swimming pool landscape designs, a swimming pool restoration or swimming pool remodeling project from Exterior Worlds could be your solution.

A restoration project is the least involved of the two projects. Perhaps the pool’s shell could use re-surfacing to achieve a particular aesthetic that is available with today’s product offerings. Or it could mean updating the pool decking with more current material choices.

With a remodeling job, however, a complete re-do is required. It is a project that involves reconsidering your pool area and tailoring it to your specific site, including terrain, tree elements, drainage and all structural architecture, and complying with your specific needs and desires. Since no two remodeling jobs are ever alike, an Exterior World’s professional design team is best suited for this extensive venture. Bottom line, though, both re-do options are viable alternatives to consider.

Items to consider in your swimming pool landscape design:

• In conjunction with your swimming pool designer, you will first need to ascertain the best location of the pool, a choice driven by the space available and the spatial relationship of the house and yard. You want it to be eye-catching and inviting. At the same time, you want it to fit the space without overpowering it.
• Another major element is the patio, the wonderful and much-used outdoor space is often the “living room” of your backyard. Common construction types include flagstone patio, wood patios and patio pavers.
• One feature of the pool to pay close attention to is the pool coping. Coping is the masonry product that sits on the edge of the pool’s shell, often rising above the patio and is the hard surface on which you sit when you dangle your feet in the water. Coping material choices are driven by two functions: compatibility (it should be coordinated with other material choices made for your home and landscape) and safety (it needs to be a non-slippery surface like brick or stone).

For more than 20 years, Houston has turned to Exterior Worlds for high-end landscape design and services, including custom swimming pools. 713-827-2255.

Outdoor Kitchen and Pool

A family named Pesek decided that their swimming pool had too much of a “1970s look.” They wanted an entirely new swimming pool designed for them, and they wanted an outdoor room built that would allow them to enjoy a view of the surrounding Houston landscape.

After carefully surveying their yard, we recommended a design based on classical geometry and proportional right angles. This would add a touch of elegance that would uphold the conservative design of the home and distinguish the property as a unique keynote in Houston landscaping design.

The house itself spoke of a simpler, more absolutist time in history. The fixed constants of the 1950s were clearly evidence in its architectural motifs, which provided us with a template of linearity and deliberate movement true to Classical design principles.

We began by rebuilding the swimming pool near the rear entrance of the house.
We completely abandoned the original lagoon-pool design. Not only did had it clashed from the beginning with the architecture of the home, but it looked cliché, to say the least, in relation to the greater Houston landscape in general.

The new swimming pool was built as a perfect rectangle distinguished with an innovative type of coping that raised perpendicular to the stone patio surface. We used the natural surface of the Houston landscape to create another perpendicular right angle at the end of the pool, where we installed a waterfall that spilled into a heated spa.

The spa was built with something of an optical illusion in mind. Though the water came from within the spa itself, it appeared to be coming from within the pool. This generated a new sense of visual “ebb and flow” that causes the earth to appears to rise up first into an illuminated pool, then onward into the steps of the home.

We built an outdoor room at the end of the pool opposite the home. We followed the same principles of simple conservatism and right angles that distinguished the home and the pool. This is not to say that we abandoned modernity by any means. Within the conservative linearity of its framework we created a fully functional outdoor kitchen complete with a smoker, a refrigerator, an ice maker, and a water heater

There was even special seating with a flat-screen plasma TV that provided state of the art fun for adults and children alike. When we were finished, there was never any need for the Peseks to return to the house once the party begins. Every amenity is available in a simple, yet also very sophisticated outdoor building. Pure luxury and a serene view of the Houston landscape are just a few steps away in a luxury pool and spa.

Luxury Garden

Where do you build a luxury garden?
We normally build it in the corner of the property. The size of the garden is determined by the acreage of the lot and the architecture of the home. The English garden theme is a very popular style, but other type European style can also be modified to create the feeling of upscale living that characterizes this form.

What are some decorations used in a luxury garden?
Décor varies according to personal taste. There is no hard fast list of luxury garden items you are restricted too. The point is to create an environment where outdoor living looks refined. Urns and are commonly used to hold plants and add vertical impact to small patios. Flowering plants are very popular, particularly with the English garden style. Examples include pansies, poppies, bluebell, and roses. If there is a masonry wall of some kind surrounding the garden, ivy can be trained to climb up the walls and turn them green with life.

What makes a luxury garden luxurious?
Formality is the name of the game in luxury garden design. It establishes order and system and creates a feeling of refinement in the midst of the outdoors. Symmetry and geometry are strictly adhered to in order to create a sense of balance. This is also a very high-maintenance form of landscaping, so be forewarned: you will need a maintenance contract to maintain your luxury garden.

Is shrubbery used in this form of gardening?
Yes. Topiaries are one of the more popular types of shrubbery used in luxury gardens because they can be molded. They are pruned into particular shapes which are highly ornamental. Some clients even prefer to forgo the erection of masonry walls around their gardens and prefer for us instead to build them walls of topiary.

What types of structures can be built in these gardens?
Luxury gardens are typically very Old World in theme and therefore feature outdoor architecture reminiscent of the estates of European Aristocracy. Statuary is commonly used to add a historical touch to the scene. Some people prefer Classical figures from Ancient Greek and Roman times. Others prefer Medieval and Renaissance statuary, particularly that of France and Italy.

Fountains are also important structures in luxury gardens. Fountains have been associated with tranquility and ease for millennia have a powerful psychological impact on any scene. Exterior Worlds specializes in the construction of high-end custom fountains that feature remote pumps and silent operations. All you hear is the sound of the water bubbling against the stonework. All fountains are professionally lit as well so they can be enjoyed at night.

Is any type of special masonry or patio work installed?
Yes. Houston masonry experts are subcontracted to build planters, retaining walls, and ornamental walls in luxury gardens. The intent in all of these forms is to mix the manmade with the natural to create a sense of the structured organic. Patio work is normally done with ornamental cut stone. Some patios are designed for seating, while others are very small and intended to support flower pots, urns, statues, and custom masonry planters.

High Quality Landscape

What is a high quality landscape?
It is a style of garden and hardscape development that creates an exceptionally high standard of outdoor living. Ingredients that are key to its success include high quality soils, plants, trees, architectural techniques and construction methods.

Is their only one style of high quality landscape?
No. This level of quality can be attained in any landscaping design style. The differentiation lies not in the type of form, but in the level of its intricacy and the exceptional level of construction and service that goes with it.

What type of homes need a high quality landscape?
The great thing about high quality landscaping is the fact that any home can theoretically benefit from it. Our only word of caution to homeowners is not to overinvest in the property. This is not to say that buying high quality is ever a bad idea. However, it must be done in proportion to your home value.

Where in a yard like this do landscapers have to focus the bulk of their attention?
Landscape professionals must focus more on softscape elements than hardscape elements. This is because almost any hardscape form, when correctly built to last and aesthetically compliment the terrain, exhibits a high level of quality in its own right. Gardens, shrubbery, ornamental trees, and special grasses now have to be added to frame the inorganic with a sculpted layer of greenery and color that retains its natural life force in the confines of sophisticated forms.

When does a high quality landscape offer today’s homeowner maximum financial value?
It creates long term sustainability. The superior aesthetics of garden planting, ornamental plant life, patio design, pool construction, and custom fountain work extend living space into the outdoor world where home buyers are invited to experience a better quality of life on two fronts: one indoors; one outdoors.

How does a high quality landscape affect the lifestyle of the homeowner?
Exterior Worlds can create such a realm in a manner that is stress free for the client. You never need to worry about what is happening, because our team handles everything.

How do hardscape elements distinguish themselves on such a property?
Quality is determined by investing in the material infrastructure of a particular form. Adding beams and substructure to patios, arbors, and pools increases the longevity of the structure and adds tangible improvements to the quality of landscaping design.

Where in the US are high quality landscapes essential?
To begin with, high quality landscaping is not limited to luxury homes. However, because home value is a determining factor in the amount of money one should spend on a landscape, most work of this type is done on luxury properties.

Three-Level Pool Patio

When they work only with softscape elements like lawns, gardens, trees, and shrubs, it is sometimes very challenging for Houston landscaping design specialists to create special zones of comfort and interest. Vegetation is good for magnifying space, but to build a sense of structure into the landscape, architectural structures and custom hardscapes have to be introduced into the master plan that will scale down the Houston landscape into deliberately proportioned spaces that create a sense of amenity for people.

One phase of a multi-phase Houston landscaping project recently done for the Friedman family illustrates this truism. The home and yard were of such monumental proportions that outdoor elements had to be designed in proportionally large dimensions. Along with a custom swimming pool, we had to build a 2,000 sq. foot patio pool deck that could host events number up to-50 people. The challenge was to design the patio with an aura of uniqueness and significance to avoid generating too much of a stage effect.

Houston landscaping designers eventually determined that three elevation changes could be built into the hardscape that would effectively create three distinct areas of interest and assembly. One area would surround the pool itself. A second area, higher area connecting to the summer kitchen of the home would overlook the pool fountain and the spa. A third area at the opposite end of the pool would lead up to an arbor that offered a superb vantage of the surrounding Houston landscape.

We constructed the patio out of Pennsylvania blue stone. Using a dark colored stone like this is one way to scale a large property down in perspective. It creates a focal point that draws the eye away from the vastness of the Houston landscape and draws it into a new realm of refined poolside comfort and special water effects.

Houston landscaping experts designed the patio with custom drains and special water jets that helped create these water effects. At night, water shot out from these jets into the lighted depths of the pool.. Stairs leading up to the terrace were built broad and wide so people would feel like they were gradually descending to the water or ascending into a higher realm.

We also used Pennsylvania sandstone to continue the aesthetic theme of the patio. This terrace offers first time visitor and returning guests alike a superb choice between the spa and the arbor above. Rocking chairs provide comfortable seating from an ideal vantage point just in front of the arbor. A retaining behind the terrace built to hold back the grade of the soil also serves a decorative function by framing the entire upper patio with border and emphasis.

Houston Pool and Lanscape Project

A Houston family by the name of Friedman was adding an outdoor summer kitchen and screened-in dining room to the rear of their home. Their home was a traditionally style home residing on an enormous lot. They hired us to develop a master plan that featured a pool and Houston landscape concept that would connect to the new addition and extend the semi-outdoor space of the screened room into fully open space.

Our assignment was to create movement, interest, intimacy, and a controlled sense of drama that would ultimately help this enormous property appear inviting and intimate through carefully constructed, special points of interest.

The design we created, in many ways, introduced the theme of the entire Houston landscape. Since the view of the backyard was by nature panoramic, and because we were dealing with an enormous yard to begin with, we wanted to create a controlled sense of drama that you were coming into a yard whose plane dropped down. Grade change was the key here. By varying elevation and step width, we could make even the largest of forms on the Houston landscape feel intimate and inviting.

One of the two most prominent elements on this vast expanse of Houston landscape was the ornate custom swimming pool that we designed for the Friedman’s. It consisted of a two-level structure, with a fountain on one end. In the fountain there were three bubblers that shot water up into the air. The bottom of the fountain was completely covered in blue glass tile and lighted from within. Although small in comparison to the rest of the pool, the uniqueness of the fountain’s design made it one of the most prominent areas of interests, ideal for pulling chairs around its perimeter.

The fountain also adds something of a spa element to the pool. The lower end is 18 inches deep-deep enough to sit in, and the water is both heated and lighted. People can actually recline here much like they do in the spa, and dangle their feet over the edge of the waterfall.

This waterfall was one of the most unique features we added to this traditional Houston landscape. We had a quarry cut a slab of stone in a radius design and cut runnels in it with a diamond saw. We then thermal finished the slab and covered the front end with a custom blend of glass tile. The various colors and hues in the glass are intentionally reflective of surrounding vegetation and water patterns. There is also a deliberate copper hue to the design to help reflect pool lighting.

This further develops the sense of controlled drama that creates interest and intimacy on such a large tract of Houston landscape. The variation of colors, especially when catching either sunlight or pool lights, especially mirrors the elegance of the adjacent parterre garden and various flower species planted to the side of the arbor entrance.

Both the upper and lower portions of the patio were made of Pennsylvania full color sandstone. The coping of the pool is a lighter colored material known as Leuders Limestone. It has a rich hue that provides a superb compliment to both the architecture of the home and the surrounding foliage. Water rises up from jets covered by custom stone covers for water jets. This adds scale and sound to the patio, and provides special effects when illuminated at night.

It is very relaxing to pull up a chair by the water jets and watch the kids run in and out of spurting water as it arches into nighttime sky above the Houston landscape and lands in the lighted water of the pool.

Infinity Pools

An infinity pool is a swimming pool or reflecting pool with a negative edge. It is also called a zero edge pool or disappearing edge pool. The intention of this design is to suggest that the water extends beyond the horizon to and vanishes into an indeterminable point beyond—literally into infinity.

Infinity pools are among the most challenging elements of landscape architecture to construct. It requires a great deal of skill on the part of the swimming pool design specialist to create the effect of vanishing water. It also requires adapting the pool to geological formation surrounding the structure. In the Houston landscape this can be particularly challenging due to the fact that we have such flat terrain.

Infinity pools here must be constructed at a high enough elevation to allow water to drop into the unseen realm at the edge of the structure. In actuality, this so-called unseen realm is really a concealed catch basin hidden beneath a weir over which the water flows. The water pours into this basin and is recirculated into the pool by silent pumps.

In order to generate the flow of water necessary to create this silent disappearing act, we have to build the weir at least one-half to one inch lower than the required water level. We also have to build a separate circulation system for the edge flow. Sufficient momentum must be present in the water in order to cause it to run over the weir into the catch basin below.

We also have to be very careful to take into account inconsistencies in flow caused by swimmers. When people swim in an infinity pool, they will naturally displace more water into the edge than normal flow will produce. The catch basin must large enough to withstand this displacement, and the pump must be sturdy enough to return the water to the upper pool.

Without exception, edge pumps in infinity pools are larger and more powerful than the main pool pump for this reason. They also feature very sophisticate filtration mechanisms to prevent the debris that flows over the weir from clogging the pump. A great deal of mathematical calculation goes into designing these edge pumps and catch basins, which might be another reason that the word “infinity” is used as a descriptor for these very special water features.

Beyond the sophisticated engineering they feature, infinity pools create some of the most magnificent scenery in all of landscape design. This is because they are always built in relationship to other points in the scenery. They can function as giant mirrors reflecting the overhanging branches of trees. They can point toward a pond or natural stream, or they can stretch toward open sky and appear to blend blue vastness with water and fluid movement with rainbows and clouds.

Small Swimming Pools

Small pools are very popular in urban areas where there are very small lots and little room for landscaping. Many of these lots have exceptionally large houses on them and tiny backyards. Others have patio homes and townhomes with a predominantly hardscape backyard landscape. Garden designs must be highly customized to home architecture and proportional to the limited space at hand. Swimming pools must be smaller but still provide the amenities and comforts of their larger equivalents on more expansive estates.

This is not as difficult as it may seem to the experienced expert in custom swimming pool design. Small pools are no different than large swimming pools or custom swimming pools. They are shaped just like other pools but are built to a much smaller scale. They can look like luxury spas, geometrically proportional forms, or even giant fountains. The benefits that they offer are anything but small, however.

A small pool can be heated so people can enjoy it year round. Many doctors recommend that arthritis patients invest in these pools because it helps soothe aching joints. Physical therapists also recommend them to patients in recovery from knee injuries and back injuries. Although a small pool may lack the area of a custom swimming pool or luxury swimming pool, it can nevertheless be constructed in a manner that facilitates good, hardy exercise.

The way we accomplish this is to construct small pools with swim jets that create strong currents in the water. The swimmer can face into the current and swim half-laps to the other side, then return to the other side to repeat the process. In fact, many people find that they get better exercise in a small pool than a larger one due to the pressure of the water and the challenge it presents to their muscles.

Small pools are also very decorative additions to a small backyard behind a cottage or townhome. They look tranquil and idyllic when surrounded by a custom garden design or small custom patio. Adding a water feature to an otherwise limited amount of greenery predominated by hardscape is typically all that one needs to alleviate the sense of having too much inorganic form in one’s yard. Water, though not technically organic, is the very stuff of life whose fluidity conveys a sense of movement, dynamism, and even mystery at times.

One way to enhance all of these unique attributes of water is to add a fountain features to a small pool. A custom fountain of any style can be built in a pool provided its dimensions remain in proportion to the pool itself and surrounding structural architecture. One of the most popular styles is the waterfall fountain. Waterfalls can be constructed in any number of forms ranging from the traditionally natural to the deliberately contemporary and modernesque.

They can also be built either at the end of a pool or along the sides. Building a waterfall along the side can actually add a safety factor to your small pool. Since we discourage the use of diving boards due to the hazards they have been known to create, a diving rock can be substituted next to a roaring waterfall that gives a swimmer a much safer way to get into the water and also allows him or her to directly experience the falls firsthand. This can make a small swimming pool look and feel much bigger, and in many instances, magnifies the dimensions of the backyard as a whole.

Reflecting Pools

A reflecting pool is a shallow pool with a very calm surface. It is normally built near another structure or element in order to reflect its form like a mirror. It can be part of a garden, a courtyard, a centerpiece for a backyard, or a standalone feature in a park or urban plaza. More famous reflecting ponds include the reflecting pool in Washington DC, The University of Western Australia, Planalto Palace in Brasilia, and Hermann Park in Houston, Texas.

The remarkably calm water that characterizes these solemn, still masterpieces is created by a simple trick of physics. The edges of the pond are made slightly deeper than the center. This inhibits wave formation and keeps the water very still even when the wind is blowing. In residential landscape design, reflecting ponds are used to link divergent landscape elements into a unified aesthetic of contemplation. The surface of the water acts like a mirror to inorganic and organic forms alike, bringing them together in a single moment.

Reflecting pools are commonly built near large garden sculpture or fountain. This has the effect of magnifying the element and making it appear more prominent on the landscape. They are also popular elements to add to areas populated by outcroppings of trees. When there are only a handful of trees on the landscape, a reflecting pool makes it appear as though there are many more than their actually are. While some areas of Houston, such as the Memorial Area, have an abundance of trees, other parts of town have smaller lots and have fewer trees. Building what amounts to a landscape mirror will make any back yard look larger than it actually is and more like a park area when you walk outside.

Reflecting pools are also built near homes and commercial buildings. This has the effect of extending the edifice of a structure forward into space. In parts of Houston where the new trend is to build up instead of out, reflecting ponds can be a valuable addition to a high-rise apartment community. The vertical presence of the buildings can be brought toward the center of a courtyard build around a reflecting pond that converges in a mirror of angles and shapes in the center of urban living space.

Reflecting pools in these environments are often done with vanishing pool edges. An infinity edge makes the water look like a true mirror in every sense of the term. In the absence of a visible shell or coping, all you see is the water’s edge and the forms that the water reflects. Generally, more contemporary settings call for this effect because of the mathematical connotations it conveys and the sophisticated aesthetic it generates in landscape design.

Landscape architects prefer to build reflecting pools with very dark basins. This prevents the basin itself from reflecting light back out of the water. Only the light that strikes the surface is reflected back toward the eyes—creating the mirroring effect we have been discussing in this analysis. The remainder of the light that penetrates the water is absorbed by the darker hues of the pool basin.

Pool Coping

Pool coping is a masonry product that sits on top of the pool beam structure. It provides transitional space between the patio proper and the surface of the water. People often sit on the coping and dangle their feet in the water. Others prefer to stand on it and peer into the water at night when pool lights illuminate the water from below. Coping should therefore be strong enough to support the weight of a person.

Pool coping is one of those hardscape designs where there is a wide range of choice in what you can do. It can be made from many different materials. Common materials include slate, travertine, concrete, brick, and stone. Material selection is based upon pool style and upon what best compliments patio build out and home architecture.

In one very unique project, we had a couple in River Oaks request that we not build a patio at all, but simply install a coping around the pool that would separate the water from the lawn. We call this our grass patio pool project and it is one of our more famous creations here in the Houston area.

Luxury pool coping is commonly made from either travertine or limestone. Both look amazingly refined when polished and work well with a number of home architectural styles—particularly Italian and Mediterranean.

The texture of the material used is determined by two things. One is how the particular material itself is formed. If it has been sawn, it will appear segmented. Honed surfaces create a more contiguous look. The other factor in creating texture is finish. Coping can be thermal finished, which means that it has been heated with a flame until it appears slightly pebbled with a medium relief.

Pool coping can also be polished to a high level of reflectivity to catch sunlight or underwater pool lights. It can also be chiseled to have a rough-cut look and appear more rugged and natural in collusion with stone patio work.

Pool coping is a major point of focus in our pool renovation projects. It is one of the most significant aspects of pool design because coping can be adjusted to correct elevation issues when lowering or raising the pool patio is not an option.

Pool coping can be either thin or thick. Thin masonry is often used to remodel a pool with insufficient elevation to create a sense of height that was previously absent. This eliminates the need to try to figure out how to lower the deck or pool shell in areas where buried cables or tree roots prevent such alterations in patio design.

Pool coping can be the keynote to your custom patio design as well if you have it done by a professional firm who knows what they are doing. Far more than simply a boundary around the water, the coping rises up to establish presence, geometry, color, and style as a prominent work of hardscape in backyard landscape design.

Swimming Pool Designer

Acting as general contractor and project design specialist, Exterior Worlds works with the best swimming pool designers in the area to help you make your dream for a custom swimming pool—from the simple to the elaborate—a reality.

The list of landscape possibilities for pools is nearly endless and varied. Maybe you want a plush entertainment area. If so, then we can devise a plan that might include a deck design with outdoor gazebo, retaining walls that double as seating, an outdoor room or an outdoor kitchen around a poolscape that was especially designed for you by your selected swimming pool designer. If your dream is for more of a private retreat, we can set the scene with a pool and spa, verdant greenery and a suitable privacy fence, perhaps embellished with antique ornamental iron flourishes.

Following are the broad steps we usually follow as project design specialists in working with you and swimming pool designers:

• As the project design specialist, Exterior Worlds takes an overview of the entire job. This position entails listening to your desires and needs, accounting for the site’s potential and limitations, integrating the pool into your overall landscape design, scheduling the workflow and adhering to budget requirements. Part of this job means recommending the appropriate swimming pool designer and, with more than two decades in this business, we know the true players in this region.
• Our team will visit you at your home to gather information about what your goals are. How will you use the pool? What do you want the pool to look like, the rest of the landscape? We will also assess what is feasible, including measuring the yard and noting sunlight patterns. Our goal is to incorporate your ideas and preferences into a seamless layout that is both elegant and functional.
• The pool designer will then submit the pool’s design for your approval. We will also make sure that you understand what to expect during the construction phase—of the pool and any other elements you have requested. After you have signed off on the plans, we begin construction. Most luxury swimming pools take about two to three months to build, depending on weather.

One team member that Exterior Worlds offers its clients is a designated project coordinator. It has been our experience that pool construction projects that do not have a dedicated coordinator drag on and go over budget. There are numerous steps to constructing a pool and they must be done in a logical order. A tight rein over those steps saves you money.

If your poolscape is older and looks outdated, a remodeling job by Exterior Worlds can breathe new life into it. We can make it look young again, which has the side benefit of increasing your property’s value.

As experts in remodeling jobs, we highly recommend using a general contractor or project design specialist. Remodeling jobs are more technical than new pool construction and require agile problem-solving skills. Additionally, we employ our expertise to keep the pool in scale and relationship with your existing landscape elements.

Call Exterior Worlds at 713-827-2255 for project management of pool construction or pool remodeling.

Swimming Pool Companies

So, if you want to put in a pool or remodel an old one—where to start? Most people think of swimming pool companies, a natural assumption. Swimming pool companies are the people with the skill and expertise to actually build the pool. The construction begins with grading and excavating the site. This phase is followed by installing rebar, or reinforced steel, and the electrical and plumbing work. At this point, the pool is ready for the initial inspection. Once approved, the next step is to spray on gunite, the concrete-like substance that forms the shell of the pool. After it cures, the coping and tile are then installed.

However, to ensure the best final outcome, you should give serious consideration to hiring a general contractor or project designer, like Exterior Worlds, before you even think about the construction phase. As project designers, we are specialists in keeping your custom swimming pool project moving, on track and on budget. Also, through our many years in business, we have developed relationships with the best experts for each particular task, which includes knowing the best swimming pool companies in this area.

We are experts in helping you define the best pool for you and your family. This skill includes developing the right questions and the right answers, such as:

• How best to keep children safe? Perhaps an ornamental iron fence around the pool.
• Will you be using the pool for business and formal entertaining? Maybe an outdoor room, complete with outdoor fireplace and entertainment center, would be enjoyable.
• Do you work long daytime hours and will use the pool mostly at night? If so, Exterior Worlds are experts in landscape lighting.

We are also experts on the codes and regulations in the different cities and neighborhoods of this region. This expertise covers appropriate tree preservation programs to protect the valuable trees on your lot, a skill-set most swimming pool companies do not have. Over the years, we have saved our clients a lot of money in this one aspect alone.

In most of the luxury landscape designs that we work in, the pool is just one element. At Exterior Worlds, we take a turnkey approach to your yard and therefore consider other hardscapes, such as garden structures (to create auxiliary focal points for variety) or pathways (that accentuate the pool as the main focal point).

Some of our clients have a theme for their landscapes, such as a classic landscape design or Mediterranean landscape design, which we take it into consideration when planning the pool. As an example: for the contour of a luxury swimming pool within a classic landscape design, we might suggest an oval or rectangle—in other words, traditional geometric shapes. It acts as a frame for the water and becomes a classic design element itself.

For another idea that is both beautiful and efficient, consider combining the pool with a pool water fountain. It heightens your visual and auditory pleasure of the pool while, at the same time, eliminating some maintenance redundancies of two separate bodies of water.

Luxury spas

Luxury spas are either part of a custom swimming pool or an outdoor room. The point of a spa is to provide you with a hot water experience outdoors. The simplicity of its function becomes a landscaping phenomenon when form is designed to capture the essence of the experience and support the many feelings of good will it brings to the soul.

Customized Bench Heights
Humans have this curious tendency to want to get only their feet wet. This is not something we want to discourage or ignore, but instead cater to. To do this, we need to build most of luxury spas with surrounding, custom benches that let people sit at a comfortable height but still get their feet in the water.

All Tile Basins
Like swimming pools, luxury spas re actually shells that hold the water itself. It is essential to make them look as attractive as can be. After all, everyone who gets into the spa will suddenly be surrounded by these walls. The best way to make them superb in appearance is to build them out of tile. And, just it is done in the world of flooring and luxury bathrooms; the actual number of styles and colors you can pick from is more than you can count.

Air Bubblers
Air bubbles add sensation and movement to the luxury spa living experience. Air bubblers are hidden at the bottom of the shell and driven by silent, subsurface pumps.

Zero Overhang Coping
Coping must be modified in a luxury spa to keep from hurting a person’s back or the back of a person’s head when they recline backwards in the water. Most spas are designed with along curved lines anyway, so a zero overhand coping also helps give snug feeling of wraparound comfort to the moment.

Therapy Jets
Many people have suffered from unfortunate accidents that hurt their backs, knees, and legs. There doctors then told them to treat themselves with hot water therapy. For these persons, we build hidden therapy jets into the basin that aim pressurized streams of water with just enough gentle force to massage, relax, and soothe sore muscles, achy joints, and herniated discs.

Custom Controls and Underwater Lights
Every individual’s comfort level is different, which is why we install custom controls in all of our luxury spas. We also install underwater lights so everyone’s face will light up as illumination springs from the surface of the water at night.

Luxury Pool

A luxury pool offers those who visit its lounge area a sustained impeccable moment of continuous comfort and joy. It is relaxation, exercise, gathering, and contemplation all united in a single structure that blends hardscape, water elements, and softscape surroundings into a special kind of Houston outdoor living.

This is a luxury that you feel rather than brag about, and something you share as a superior experience instead of promoting as a symbol of status. A luxury pool works for the landscape and with the landscape as it simultaneously serves the humanness of people with a practical artistry that adds an elevated value to the living experience of each guest.

Because luxury pools have this tendency to elevate our sense of this seemingly elusive thing we call the quality of life, they are often designed to strike the eye with a visibly elevated design. It is by no means a hard fast rule for us, but we often do find ourselves building a pool with multiple levels. Many times there will be a division between the shallow end of the pool and the deeper end, with a feeling of descending, as if on stairs, into the cooler comforts of water that goes over your head.

Frequently a multi-level luxury pool will also have a spa located at the shallower end. Spas are specified in detail during the landscape master plan stage and are built into the shell of the pool itself. Silent pumps are installed to keep the water circulating, and heaters are concealed to keep it warm. We also install controls to regulate water temperature and flow and lighting that illuminates the water at night with a sense of experience that extends beyond mechanical amenities.

It is necessary for us to frame such a setting with a sense of special surrounding. This is done in three places: the coping, the patio, and the surrounding gardens.

Simply put, a coping is the raised area that looks like a step that travels all around the edges of the pool. It actually works as a step by making a person pause just for a split second as they walk toward the water. Somehow, long ago, people discovered this was a safer and more comfortable way to get into a pool rather than just stepping off a sheer drop-off into however many feet of water was waiting for them.

We pay special mind to building a coping around the pool that works like a mirror to home architecture. There are all types of high-grade materials we can use for this. We also carefully calculate both the width and height of the coping because it works as visual frame that lends symmetry and containment to the otherwise formless nature of water.

In a very real sense a custom patio frames the pool also, and it also works to compliment the architecture of the house. Custom hardscape and patio work is made using any number of materials. Depending on the landscape design that surrounds the patio, we may build something very formal and geometric using flagstone or special blocks sunk into the ground. Or, we might establish a deliberately irregular pattern that mimics natural stone formations and blends gently with surrounding organic softscape patterns.

There are ways, too, that we can make the water itself look exceptional. We bring in a special partner company to install underwater lighting that illuminates our luxury pool from within so as to make it look multidimensional at night. Water jets and falls can also add an even more of a dynamic sense of life and dimension.