If you’ve decided to renovate your outdoor living space, this could allow your inner artist to emerge. Why not take this opportunity to let your outdoor space express your creative side? Incorporating art and color into every part of your renovation will create a place that conveys your artistic message to the world.
1. Choose a Color Theme
Although random colors will create a patchwork effect, it’s more cohesive to choose a color scheme. Select a color that resonates with your heart. Design experts advise that red is an excellent theme color for people who like giving parties, while blue can evoke a sense of sanctuary.
Once you select your color theme, use shades of it throughout your yard. For example, a blue theme could include shades like navy, teal, and turquoise. There are colors naturally occurring in your yard, such as green plants or brown earth. In addition to color, your theme can incorporate artistic themes like circles or a checkerboard.
Once you choose your theme and plan to include some of its hues, you can complete your renovation using bursts of other colors. When you let your imagination be your guide, each component of your backyard will work together like puzzle pieces. Here are some of the ways you can make this happen:
2. Create Colorful Fences
Your backyard fence can stand, like a perfect ribbon, through the design for your outdoor space. If you have a small backyard, choose a brightly colored fence to make it look larger. Bright shades will reflect natural light and help your yard seem bigger. Dark shades can help a large yard seem more intimate.
Using your theme color in a fence will integrate the fence into your outdoor living renovations. You could use that color in every column of the fence, or alternate its use on every other fence post. You may opt for a neutral fence color with your theme color as its hardware or horizontal posts.
Although some homeowners may try installing their fences, it can be more challenging than you think. Contacting a team of professional fence installation workers is an excellent investment. An experienced team will seamlessly incorporate your color scheme into your fence design and provide you with a fence that will be safe and long-lasting.
3. Choose the Best Topsoil
A good topsoil mix will provide essential nutrients to your greenery and correct soil issues – like poor pH balance. Many homeowners who realize the importance of topsoil will arrange with a local lawn or garden contractor to provide top soil delivery to their homes. By using a delivery service, you can be sure you have the topsoil to include in your outdoor living renovations.
There are many colors of topsoil, but white, yellow, and gray topsoil are not favorable for plant growth. Black topsoil typically contains significant levels of organic matter, like peat. Black topsoil is considered the best type of soil for growing plants, because of the nutrients in the organic elements in its composition.
Red topsoil is oxidized and contains a high oxygen content, potassium, and nitrogen to nurture plants. Brown topsoil is composed of sifted sand. If you choose brown topsoil, mixing it with compost is best since it doesn’t actively support plant growth. By reviewing their attributes, you can select topsoil that helps your plants while blending with your outdoor theme.
4. Clean Up with a Dumpster
While a dumpster may not impact the design of your outdoor living renovations, it’s an essential part of the renovation process. While readying your outdoor space for the changes you’ll be making, some items must be discarded. Backyard renovation experts recommend the use of a construction dumpster.
Though this may seem too large, you may be surprised by how much trash will accumulate. Regular-sized dumpsters may fill quickly and necessitate several trips to the landfill. Those extra trips would increase the cost of your rental.
When you contact the contractors, one of them may know a good dumpster rental service – or provide a dumpster for you for an additional fee. Once your project has been finished, you’ll be glad you got a dumpster rental service. Its rental can be the key to a clean slate before or after your backyard renovation.
5. Choose Nonliving Components
You may want a deck, a rock wall, a pathway, or a pagoda for your project. There may be some contractors who bill themselves as a hardscape contractor and are capable of working with all types of hardscapes. However, depending on your preference, you may hire someone specializing in rock formations, deck installation, or concrete pathways.
A creative hardscape team can ensure their elements blend into surrounding colors. The team can use materials that have been colored to match the project’s overall theme or opt for a neutral color that will add to the overall effect. If the materials don’t lend themselves to painting, try asking for accent colors or accessories to blend the materials into the overall color and design.
You don’t always have to use the prevailing colors when adding to your outdoor living renovations. Sometimes, a contrasting color may provide a more dramatic effect. Ask the hardscape team to construct small matching rock or wooden structures that can be placed throughout the backyard to emphasize the overall theme.
6. Care for Your Lawn
If your outdoor living space includes a lawn, you’ll add lawn care to your checklist after the renovation. If your lawn isn’t watered often enough, the languishing lawn will detract from the appearance of your outdoor living renovations. Whether a lawn maintenance contractor does your lawn irrigation for you or installs an irrigation system, lawn experts recommend that the lawn be watered once or twice a week.
You should incorporate the color of the grass into the overall design. If the structures next to the grass aren’t a good match for green, there are ways to correct that problem. Using a mosaic that blends the natural green of the grass into the color of the adjacent structure, you can seamlessly include your lawn in the design of your outdoor space.
7. Clean Up Your Buildings
During outdoor living renovations, you may discover design elements you want to keep the same. You may have a pathway that will fit your design yet need cleaning. In some cases, the exterior of your home may need to be cleaned during the renovation process. In those cases, you may need to use the services of a pressure cleaning company.
Pressure washing is using a water spray directed toward a building or structure to remove dirt, peeling paint, debris, or dust. Having this service provided by a professional contractor is a good idea. Pressure cleaning contractors can perform the service safely, thoroughly, and on time.
To choose a pressure cleaning company, the amount of experience is more important than how much they charge. Before you sign a contract for pressure washing during your outdoor living renovations, please read it carefully to be sure the services you were promised are the ones specified in the contract.
8. Craft a Rock Retaining Wall
Homeowners often erect rock retaining walls to prevent soil erosion or to deal with soil drainage issues. Homeowners whose homes are on a sloping hill often need these structures to assist with drainage issues. Consider adding one of these regal and beautiful structures to your lawn as part of your outdoor living renovations. Depending on your artistic theme, it may be a key element in completing it.
Rock retaining walls are frequently crafted from limestone, fieldstone, or concrete. A landscaping contractor can often complete these walls. If you want the wall to blend further into your color scheme, you can ask the contractor to help you choose the best stones to integrate into the theme.
If you’ve planted a garden or constructed a pagoda, a rock wall is often used to emphasize these features. These walls don’t always have to be created in a conventional shape. Some homeowners have opted for a staircase made of rock-covered steps to lead into their gardens or pond areas.
9. Create the Perfect Landscape
Your landscape plan can include plants, flowers, and your lawn. The theme you chose for your outdoor living renovations can be featured in every part of your landscape. When selecting plants and flowers, you don’t have to be limited to blending colors or creating a color pattern. You can further emphasize your theme by choosing consistent flower or plant shapes – i.e., circles, spears, sunbursts, or straight lines.
In addition to providing a beautiful outdoor space, a well-landscaped yard will increase your home’s curb appeal. It can also increase your property value. If prospective homebuyers look at your home, seeing a creatively designed landscape will enhance your home’s value. Even if you’re not planning to sell your home, imagine how the beauty of your landscape can enhance the appearance of your neighborhood.
Your landscape designers have probably been part of every phase of your renovation. However, this is the place where they’ll get to shine. They may have creative suggestions for you. An experienced landscape designer will know if they can carry out your design plans and if specific plants or flowers would best lend themselves to your soil type, climate, and all the other elements of your renovation plans.
10. Construct a Wonderful Deck
Building a beautiful deck can serve as the perfect vantage point when you finish your backyard project and want the perfect place to enjoy it. Decks are great as a bridge between the home and the yard. Decks also provide a gathering place for family and friends. You can include patio furniture and bring out a picnic table for an impromptu picnic.
A carpenter can be the perfect choice for someone to carry out your design for the deck. However, a home renovation contractor may also have the expertise to construct your deck safely. Ask any prospective contractor to show you pictures of their previous projects. If possible, ask if there are any references they can share from former clients.
The shape and wood color of the deck can add to the theme for your outdoor living renovations. In addition to the wooden structures, your deck can include elements of style, including deck umbrellas in a corresponding color or pattern. For example, someone with a maritime theme could have a fishermen’s net hung in one of the open spaces on the deck. Inside the net, they could attach ceramic replicas of crabs, fish, or clamshells.
11. Complete the Perfect Pathway
To connect all the elements of your plan for outdoor living renovations, you’ll need to have a pathway through and to each component. The design of your backyard pathways may serve as the crowning touch for your outdoor design plan. Many prefer using concrete as the best material to provide strong and durable pathways.
Concrete is most frequently purchased in neutral colors but can also be ordered in any color you choose. If you want something extraordinary, you can add quartz flakes or mosaic tiles within or as a border for your pathways. Some concrete clients have also decided to use a pattern or include a logo in the concrete.
One of the most popular types of concrete is ready mix concrete. This pathway material is mixed at the concrete batching plant and delivered to your work site. This type of preparation can produce a large amount of customized concrete, and then replicate the formula if you later discover more concrete is needed.
As you can see, bringing your outdoor living renovations to life will involve many choices. However, when all the plans have been carried out, you’ll have the backyard paradise of your dreams. Whether you do it in stages or all at once, why not begin the process toward those dreams today?
