Indoor-outdoor living is no longer a trend — it is an imperative. After years of being cooped up indoors during the pandemic, most people truly understand the importance of spending time outside, with fresh air and sunshine to improve their health and wellbeing.
Yet, to ensure that you enjoy your time in your outdoor spaces, you need to design spaces that are welcoming, comfortable and chic. Here are a few tips to bring style and coziness to your outdoor living areas.
Invest in a Statement Piece
A good rule of thumb for decorating any space — interior or exterior — is to invest in a large statement-making piece of furniture first. In your outdoor space, placing a statement piece before you design other elements ensures that the space feels cohesive and maintains visual balance while remaining functional for you and your guests. Typically, the outdoor statement piece is a large piece of outdoor furniture, such as a sectional. Larger furniture tends to dominate viewers’ attention, so you need to be certain that your seating is appealing and informs the rest of your outdoor style. However, if you do become obsessed with a statement-making coffee table or a unique and exciting light fixture, these can also help to guide you in your outdoor styling decisions.
Place an Outdoor Rug
In interior spaces, rugs tend to offer warmth and comfort to hard, cold floors. Rugs can do the same in the outdoors, but more often, exterior rugs help to define the space, separating different zones to help you and your guests orient themselves properly.
You need to be careful to choose a rug that is an appropriate size for your space; rugs that are too small will make your outdoor area feel imbalanced, while rugs that are too large might interfere with the functionality of your space. You also need to be careful to invest in a rug that is designed for use outside. Outdoor rugs are manufactured using hardier materials, which are likely to withstand elements like moisture, sunlight, dirt and more better than rugs produced for indoor use.
Accessorize With Greenery
Plants never go out of style. Though the indoor plant trend might have lessened with the end of the pandemic — and the increase in business of people’s lives — outdoor plants remain vital to creating a comfortable and inviting outside space. What’s more, outdoor plants tend to require less time and effort to maintain, assuming you choose varieties of greenery based on your regional climate.
There are various ways that you can use your yard’s landscaping to affect the look and feel of your outdoor living space. Aside from hardscaping a patio or deck on which your furniture can perch, you might add a flower or herb garden nearby that will ward off some of the most irksome outdoor pests, like mosquitos. Large, shady trees can help keep temperature stable, even if you have a covering over your space. Finally, you should accessorize your space with plenty of planters filled with interesting greenery. These components can add color and texture that brings excitement to your outdoor décor.
Think About Levels
Too often, amateur home designers decorate on a single level: the height of the tables in their space. Regardless of how much variation in texture and color they use, the single level of the décor can be visually boring. Especially in outdoor spaces, which tend to have higher ceilings — if there are any ceilings at all — you should try to bring the viewer’s eye up with decorations that make good use of vertical space.
In addition to hanging planters and other forms of décor high on walls and dangling from ceiling beams, you might consider other ways to add visual interest on a higher level. For example, you might make a garden wall or ladder planter, which extends greenery along a vertical axis. Water features like fountains can also help to move the eye up. In this aspect of outdoor décor, you can and should be creative, experimenting with different ideas until you find the right fit for your space.
You won’t want to spend more time outdoors if your exterior space is ugly and uncomfortable. Investing time and energy into making an attractive and enjoyable outdoor space will improve your lifestyle — and add more value to your home, to boot.
