A fiber optic pool offers more opportunities for special effects due to the nature of the lights within its interior. The lights themselves are the safest of underwater lights. A greater diversity of color and form is also possible when illuminating swimming pools with fiber optics. Decorative options range from bright borders just under the pool coping, to specific colors of the rainbow, to the emulation of stars in the
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Swimming Pools
Swimming pools complete and enhance a great landscape design
Within a landscape design plan, the biggest, and often the most impressive, hardscape is a luxury swimming pool. Equal parts lifestyle, enjoyment and elegance, a luxury swimming pool is the choice of a homeowner whose goal is to maximize leisure time and to create a backyard retreat or family center. Luxury swimming pools are technically and artistically sophisticated, conceptually exciting and one of a kind—thus helping to further distinguish the overall property from all others.
Why Have a Luxury Swimming Pool?
A luxury swimming pool is a necessity for any upscale home. It finishes off the design of the house because it is a natural extension of your indoor living space. When it comes time to sell your home, it is an expected amenity. Additionally, luxury swimming pools and high end landscaping are great for entertaining, formal or informal, adults or children. They provide healthful exercise; swimming has long been recognized as one of the kinder activities on joints and ligaments. In the Houston landscape, they provide a natural place to cool off during our long summer season. In other words—good for your home, good for you and good for fun.
You May Ask Yourself
Following are some of the issues involved in designing a luxury swimming pool—in consideration of both present and future value:
- How do you and your family plan to use the pool? For instance, daily use or mainly for entertaining? Are you planning to swim laps or will it be a play pool for children? Remember when answering these questions that it is OK to have a pool just for the visual pleasure.
- What is the pool’s connection to the rest of space? You will want to work with a landscape architect or landscape designer to ensure that all areas, such as a outdoor kitchen or outdoor water fountain, integrate seamlessly with the pool. You want it to respond to the existing context.
- What add-ons do you want? These options include a spa, sun shelf (a specially built feature for sunning), and underwater benches. Other elements: waterfalls, negative edges, slides, diving boards.
- Overall depth. This factor is primarily determined by how you plan to use the pool.
- Do you want it heated?
- Salt systems. There are pros and cons to this popular choice. Jeff Halper with Exterior Worlds says, “The main thing to remember is that you need to be aware of your surrounding material choices if you use a salt system. Salt has a corrosive effect and soft decking material can deteriorate due to it.”
- Landscape lighting options. Luxury swimming pools innately welcome dramatic outdoor lighting.
- Maintenance. Swimming pools need regular maintenance. Your landscape architect or landscape designer will be able to refer you to a quality pool service company.
- Most importantly: safety. All choices about a pool should factor in safety. One way to do it so is through the use of fences. Halper points out that they can be used in a non-intrusive way. “We like to hide fences and gates by weaving them among shrubbery. This method makes the pool area safe, up to code and aesthetically pleasing,” he says.
Finish It Off
Designed by an architect who manages the construction and oversees all the details and nuances, luxury swimming pools come in all sizes—a cocktail pool, a lagoon pool or a water work of art. You can use varied geometries, materials and plantings to create the most sophisticated environment for your luxury swimming pool.
Quality swimming pool finishes include:
Two For One
Luxury swimming pools are an excellent place to work in an outdoor water fountain. For one thing, the maintenance of an additional body of water is completely eliminated by having both elements connected. Some of the necessary equipment to have a stand-alone fountain, such as the chlorinator, auto-fills for water, lights and filters, are redundant and therefore not needed. Finally, in general, swimming pools tend to be a reasonably large body of water which is an asset to outdoor water fountains because it mitigates the problem that stand-alone water fountains tend to have with water loss due to evaporation and splashing.
Let the pros at Exterior Worlds guide you through the process of adding a luxury swimming pool to your landscape; call 713-827-2255.
For more the 20 years Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston’s fine neighborhoods.
Custom Swimming Pool and Fiber Optic Stars
Fiber optic stars are lighting effects created by tiny cables connected to a remote electrical source. They are the safest lights to use in a swimming pool because they do not bring electricity into contact with water. They also produce the most amazing special effects.
Each cable can display a different color of light, including pure white light. Because controller is capable of illuminating both individual cables, as well as
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Pool Restoration
Swimming pool restoration is not as extensive as swimming pool renovation. It is a more superficial remake of surfaces and finishes. By superficial we do not mean that it lacks significance in the grand scheme of landscape design. On the contrary, swimming pool restoration is of vital importance because it maintains the beauty of one of the most significant focal points in the backyard landscape.
The intent here is to
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Outdoor Swimming Pool Design
Outdoor swimming pool design is one of the most exciting and fulfilling aspects of landscape architecture. When guests come to visit, they almost always want to go to the pool. Regardless of whether they intend to actually swim, lay out, or gather for conversation on the patio, it is absolutely necessary to get this part of the landscape done professional and correctly. Because it functions as an almost immediate extension
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Lagoon Pool Designs
Sometimes, in a natural setting, we want every structure to look as much a part of Nature as can be reasonably expected from something built by man. This can be a challenge with certain landscape elements such as swimming pools which are by nature artificial environments. While the nature of the thing itself cannot be changed in such an instance, its proportions and appearance can be. In the case of
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Landscape Pool Design
The first thing to consider in landscape pool design is the size and shape of the pool. It must be constructed in the complex of a larger and more comprehensive landscape master plan. The geometry of the pool should complement the architecture of the home. It should also tie in with other hardscape elements, outdoor architecture, and garden landscape designs.
Your Houston landscape designer should be the first person you
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Backyard Pool Design
Nothing adds new character and curb appeal to a property quite like backyard pool design does. It gives homeowners and guests a focal point for outdoor entertainment, and it adds curb appeal to your home. Adding a pool can often be the first element in a residential landscape design plan that can take an otherwise unwanted or overlooked yard and become a whole new world of outdoor living as its
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Swimming Pool Coping
Pool coping is a masonry product that sits on top of the pool beam structure. It sits partly on the edge of the swimming pool shell, and it rises above the patio or deck. It is also one of the most important structures in swimming pool design because it provides transitional space between the patio proper and the surface of the water.
People like to sit on pool coping and
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Pool Design Ideas
Pool design ideas are something you need to take the time to look into. Regardless of whether you are using online sources, print sources, or driving around, never go for anything cheap or passé. A swimming pool will literally make or break the curb appeal of a home. Nothing will destroy a backyard landscape quicker than a generic swimming pool design. Forget about those “luxury” pools as many people like
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Linear Pool Designs
Linear pool designs can be integrated into a variety of Houston landscaping plans. Linearity is an integral element of classical, formal, modern, and contemporary design. Any home that features a strong preference for clear lines and sharp angles can be enhanced with a linear swimming pool. Many landscape features that function as aesthetic anchor points to the various styles of landscaping we do can also work in conjunction with a
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