You wouldn’t fill a modern home with rustic furniture, nor would you choose sleek, clean lines and a minimalist look for a log cabin. When it comes to designing your swimming pool, you should also be thinking about what best suits your surroundings and complements your house.
Just as houses come in all styles, shapes and sizes, the same holds true for swimming pools. A pool can enhance the look of your home by blending seamlessly into it, or it can provide contrast and, in many cases, a great deal of visual appeal.
For example, you might think of a geometric pool as old school and traditional, but set it beside a modern or contemporary home, and suddenly you’ve added character to your property. Likewise, modern homes can sometimes feel sterile and uninviting, but adding a radius to the ends of your pool, with concrete steps, seating and a spa, will fit your home’s style while softening sharp edges and producing a comforting appearance.
A home with an eye-popping view, like many on Cape Cod, demands special features that allow you to look past the pool to the ocean. Designing a pool with the water level even with the deck and building a perimeter overflow pool, often referred to as an “infinity edge,” is a great way to bring that view front and center. Eliminate coping and waterline tile, and there’s nothing breaking up your line of sight.
When deciding upon architectural elements for your pool and landscape, it’s a great idea to coordinate with your home’s architect and interior designer so that themes from one setting to another appear to flow together. Just as designers will try to match materials used on the house with any outdoor structure, the same can be accomplished when designing your pool.
A brick home might call for brick trim on the pool decking, or concrete pavers, while brick or natural stone in the fence surrounding the pool is a wonderful complement. A home with a stone foundation or one with chimneys will blend seamlessly into a pool enhanced by surrounding stonework, including natural stone steps leading to the pool, and travertine or tumbled marble flooring on the deck.
If you have a classic cedar-shingled Cape Cod home, a pool that incorporates natural elements will provide wonderful balance. Instead of decking, you could use the lawn as your surround, with an unobtrusive low stone wall framing the pool, and a series of large stones embedded into the grass serving as a casual, comfortable walkway.
A cottage in the woods could be best complemented by a minimalist pool that blends into the landscape, surrounded only by grass, with perhaps Adirondack chairs cleverly located to provide outdoor seating.
Conversely, if you have a luxurious landscape filled with vibrant plantings and native bushes, a grotto pool, complete with a rock waterfall and a cavern-like space beneath it, will make you feel as though you’re swimming in your own private lagoon.
When carefully designed, a pool should be more than an addition to your home; it should become part of it. Utilize architectural elements that bind together your home and your pool, and your entire property will be in perfect harmony.