Adding a pool to your home’s backyard can furnish you with lots of opportunities for recreation with friends and loved ones, and creating an outdoor entertaining space can expand the usable and livable areas of your home, improving resale value.
In short, there are plenty of reasons to add a pool to your home (though we won’t get into that here), but at the same time, some pools produce a better experience than others.
Here are some things to consider building into the design of your pool that will result in a superior experience (and add more value).
Pool Heaters
For those in temperate climates, the addition of a pool heater can totally revolutionize the experience. Let’s face it, getting into a cool, or even lukewarm pool, when the temperature is less than blazing hot is not a pleasant experience.
The range of comfortable water temperatures is much lower than the range of comfortable air temperatures. That’s just a fact. Adding a pool heater will make your pool usable for longer, extending your enjoyment through other months of the year when you might otherwise have kept it covered.
The bottom line? Add a pool heater to your pool and use it earlier and keep it out later.
Pool Lights
Pool lights obviously improve safety. But ambient lighting with an eye on improving safety is not the reason this is being brought up. It’s ambient lighting for the sake of ambiance.
Underwater lights suffuse the entire pool with a seductive glow. More importantly, they cast that glow upwards on the area around the pool, too. This improves the poolside mood and creates an immersive experience that is much better than it would be if all you had was overhead lighting.
Include a Waterfall and Grotto
Including a waterfall into the design of your pool has a lot of practical benefits. It helps circulate the water, keeping it cooler on hot days, and it also increases pool chemical circulation. A waterfall also helps drown out competing white noise.
But our suggestion is to build a waterfall because it will enable you to create a pool grotto behind it, which is a cozy, intimate little nook that will increase your enjoyment of your pool (and again, add value).
Add a Pool House
A pool house (if you’re unfamiliar) is a small structure that gives users areas to change, use the restroom, or relax in the shade. Depending on the size of the pool house and the facilities it offers, it can also be a place to house guests in the short term, sort of like a private, detached sweet. Adding a pool house to your patio or yard will also increase the usable square footage of your home, thereby increasing value.
Add an Outdoor Kitchen
Lastly, add an outdoor kitchen to your patio, complete with a sink, counter space, wet bar, and grill. Add some lights, fans, a TV or entertainment system, a firepit and table with seating, and you’ve just doubled the size of your entertaining space, if not more! An outdoor kitchen will give you plentiful opportunities for entertaining and recreation, and on top of that, will increase the value of your home.
Working with Pool Builders in Houston
For those of you in the Houston area looking at this, consider working with Ocean Blue Pools, a pool builder in Houston with 30 years of experience.
They use advanced design software, enabling the visualization of a space before construction begins, and offer a variety of services to ensure you can completely customize your vision for your outdoor space.
Also, though they’re a pool builder in Houston, they also serve the surrounding areas, like Katy, Conroe and Fresno – so if you’re in the area, reach out.
