Are you looking for an amazing outdoor living space in Northern Virginia where you can truly maximize your time spent outside? There’s nothing quite like having a personal oasis right in your own backyard. Besides being able to enjoy it for yourself, it can be the perfect spot to entertain family and friends.
Of course, when it comes to a backyard entertainment area, you want to make sure that no detail is forgotten. After all, while there are plenty of people who have nice backyards, chances are, you are looking to take your outdoor entertaining area design to the next level.
You want something that will truly make your home special—and have everyone talking for days about your amazing space and the total experience that it offers.
To make sure that you aren’t forgetting even the smallest of details, we’ve rounded up a list of tips to design the perfect outdoor entertainment space.
By spending some time thinking about what you want out of your new ultimate backyard space, you’ll be better prepared to get the process underway.
1. Don’t Get Stuck with a Cookie Cutter Patio (It’s the Heart of your Outdoor Living Space!)
One of our first tips is to be highly selective when it comes to the landscaping company that is going to be designing and building your patio. The patio will be at the heart of the entire outdoor living space and even though you’ll likely add many other amenities, the patio will serve as the foundation for the space (quite literally!). It’s not something that you want to be left up to a cookie-cutter design.
Unfortunately, a lot of landscaping companies tend to create these cookie-cutter landscape designs that they’re comfortable doing. That’s why you likely have seen very similar patios from home to home. For a long time, a small kidney-shaped patio was the design of choice and it seemed like there were so many of these. But in talking to homeowners who had a patio like this put on, they’ve expressed it’s not actually very functional.
That is why you want a company that is known for its creativity and out-of-the-box thinking so that you end up with something truly custom. You want a patio that is designed to meet your wants and needs, not just be slapped on as an afterthought to building a home.
In terms of creativity, you want it for everything from the shape of the patio to its layout to even the material used to build it.
At Rock Water Farm, we believe that natural stone is the superior choice for a patio material. But there are plenty of landscaping companies that aren’t comfortable working with natural stone because it can be more difficult and require more skill to install.
But if you are going to have an amazing backyard entertainment area that has all the bells and whistles, we know you likely don’t want an inferior product for the patio material.
It’s worth working with a company that can offer you the best.
2. Make Sure Size, Layout, and Space are Considered for a Backyard Entertainment Area
Your plans for your outdoor living space need to align with the actual space that you end up having built. That sounds pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed how often homeowners don’t end up with a patio that truly works for them when the process is finished.
The outdoor living space might look decent on paper but when it comes time to actually using it, it’s not as functional as you may have wanted.
Oftentimes, this is because seemingly small details were overlooked during the process of creating the outdoor entertaining area design.
But making sure that you can properly entertain in your new entertainment spot means thinking through how you envision using the space when it’s finished.
This includes everything from how many people you think you’ll host on your patio to what you’ll do while entertaining there. These details are really important when it comes to creating the space. After all, if you frequently see yourself having three or four other families over, you don’t want a patio that was designed to comfortably fit only two or three families.
You want to make sure that you’ll have ample seating space, room for the furniture you want, and even areas to spread out and do different things (maybe one area for lounging and one for eating).
Here are some questions to ponder as you think about designing the perfect outdoor entertaining spot.
- Do you plan to eat meals outside and how much space will you need for seating?
- Are you interested in eating outside and want to include an outdoor kitchen?
- Are you going to have a swimming pool as part of the extended patio design?
- Do you envision sitting in front of a fire feature while spending time on your patio?
- How much and what type of furniture do you want to incorporate (and where)?
- Will you require any built-in or overflow seating for larger parties?
- Do you have a sloped property, meaning you might have a multi-level patio?
While you might assume that all landscape contractors would go through these types of questions, the fact is that many of them are not focused on all these details.
3. When it Comes to a Backyard Entertainment Area Amenities Should Never be an Afterthought
Creating the ultimate hang-out where people love to come over and spend time at your home, means adding the right assortment of amenities to your space.
We’ve alluded to some of these above in the questions that we suggested you ponder.
Features like a swimming pool, an outdoor kitchen, fire features, water features, a pergola or pavilion, a lawn game area, audio, and visual components, and so many other amenities are what will truly take your space to the next level. These will be essential when it comes to how you and your friends and family spend time in the space.
There is no question that a patio is made special and more usable by the features that are added to it.
But these can often be difficult or even impossible to add at a later date so you want to make sure they are planned for in advance. The last thing that you want is to have to dig up your patio to run utility lines for an outdoor kitchen at a later date. Even if you plan to phase a project in two or three stages, you still want it done in a way that nobody but you knows it’s incomplete.
By discussing these amenities at the time the outdoor entertaining area design is completed, your landscape professional can come up with a Master Plan. Then, even if all of the amenities are not completed at once, the project will come together the way it was meant to, with each stage looking and functioning as though it was finished.
No More Boring Patios: Creating the Ultimate Backyard Entertainment Area
Hopefully, some of these tips gave you some ideas to think about as you start to plan your outdoor entertaining area design. We understand that the entire process can feel a bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to!
With the right landscape designer and builder as your partner, you’ll be guided to making wise choices that will mean your outdoor living area ends up just the way you want.
It will also mean that no important details will be afterthoughts and that instead of worrying that you’ll be unhappy with your space in the end, you’ll be spending all of your time enjoying it!
By making a wise choice amongst landscape designers and builders, you can feel confident that you’re in good hands.
At Rock Water Farm, we believe there is no room for error when it comes to investing your hard-earned money into an amazing outdoor living area. When designed and built properly, you certainly won’t end up with a boring, run-of-the-mill, or (worst of all) problematic patio—you’ll end up with the ultimate outdoor living space that fulfills all of your dreams and then some.
Are you ready to get started on the patio of your dreams at your Haymarket, Gainesville, or Round Hill, VA home? If so, talk to an expert, choose a solution that rocks, and get ready to see your dreams begin to take shape!
