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76 Outdoor Back Yard Side Yard Design Photos And Ideas

The home wraps around a protected courtyard
Hutchins and Montague worked with Samuel H. Williamson Associates Landscape Architecture on the garden, which is planted with sword ferns, vine maple, and wild ginger. “When we look at it from the bedroom, it’s our private little forest,” Montague says.
The curvilinear lines and caned wicker seats of the Arlington collection reference British colonial style. Man-made wicker offers an authentic caned look with all the benefits of a modern material.
Connect 5 backyard porch at sunset.
Rimrock | Olson Kundig
A prefab pool- and guesthouse designed by LABhaus frames views of a Massachusetts property’s original structure, a Dillman model Sears, Roebuck kit house from 1928.
An interior courtyard.
Pockets of greenery add a warmth to the interior courtyards.
The chairs on the terrace are from the Rusa collection by KAA Design, and the Diamond outdoor sofas are from Cane-line.
Creekside Residence
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“The lone valley oak in some ways defined the shape of the house,” says landscape architect Bernard Trainor. The structure wraps around the century-old tree, forming a courtyard with a series of fiber-cement chairs by French designer Julia von Sponeck.
- Miami, Florida Dwell Magazine : July / August 2017
Mary Jo Davis, Marja Preston, Jonathan Davis, and Tia Preston gather on the deck. “The community is the biggest selling point,” Preston says. “The icing on the cake is sustainability.”
Fields of native grasses connect the main residence, situated at the top of the slope, to the new structures scattered below.
The Conine family engineered the stainless-steel chain-mail mesh curtain system themselves using bedsheets to mock up the design. In the final version, a sunscreen with grommets from Whiting & Davis blocks the blazing sun while standing up to the strong winds of the Jackson Hole valley.
Windows and terraces were designed to frame specific vistas ranging from rural pastures to vineyards, olive groves, and the Hanging Rock outcrop. “The views are very controlled,“ Titania says.
A lap pool runs alongside the west facade of a hybrid prefab home in Palm Springs by Sander Architects. “Our version of prefab,” explains architect Whitney Sander, “involves the use of building shells that are the ‘heavy lifting’ parts of any house: main structure, secondary structure, and (often) building skin.”
A level, trellised garapa-wood deck connects the main structure to the pool house. “The arbors near the pool knit everything together,” says Mikiten. “The deck is constructed over a drainage pit so the wood surface can be completely flush with the interior floor and the surrounding yard, which is critical for a fluid experience by someone using a wheelchair.”
Melanie suns beneath the lattice on the porch between the pool and the pool house, which is clad in Cor-Ten steel.
The homes were designed to maximize the indoor/outdoor experience. “On long weekends, we sit in the garden, invite friends, and make a barbecue. It’s like we’ve gone on holiday without leaving home,” says resident Luca Pagnan.
In one part of the landscape, Wynants placed a Sunball, a circa-1968 piece by Günter Ferdinand Ris and Herbert Selldorf.
In the Mission District yard Monica Viarengo created for the Sharkey family, outdoor chalkboard paint by Sydney Harbour applied to marine-grade plywood offers a gallery for creativity. A mural by local artist Erik Otto—inspired by the neighborhood—brightens the back of the space.
The water wall was one of the family’s main requests. Not only does it provide the girls— Serafina, Carolina, and Madeleine—a place to play, it also blocks street noise.
Just like the interior, the outdoor shower is an exercise in reduction and contrast: It’s merely a boulder placed under a showerhead on the side of the building. “If you really strain your eyes, you can see perhaps one other house,” Cheshire says of the vista.
The couple source ideas for their garden from their trips to Japan.
Wildlife are frequent visitors here, but the area’s active woodpeckers aren’t very welcome, so the house is clad in corrugated metal siding by Recla Metals.
Delighted with the result, they requested additional structures, including a pool house with a dining area that opens to the outdoors. Rising from the edge of the pool deck, a planted overhang shelters a gym and sauna below.
Once unkempt terrain (1), the lot was replanted by Elysian Landscapes. Board-formed concrete walls now hold a lush collection of Bloodgood Japanese maple trees, Canyon Prince wild rye grasses, and Blue Fox Tail agaves. A Spun stool by Heatherwick Studio for Magis joins an outdoor furniture set by Plain Air.
On the terrace, Air chairs by Jasper Morrison for Magis surround an oak table with black trestle legs. The limestone used to build the original structure was sourced from a quarry less than a half-mile away.
The patio is equipped with IKEA furniture; the previous residents chose the sliders and windows, which are by Sierra Pacific
For the garage, the couple replaced rotted timbers, swapped in new gutters, and stained the exterior Cordovan Brown by Benjamin Moore to match the home and pool house.
On approach to the guesthouse, the family keeps an edible garden in concrete planters by the property’s landscape designer, Cielo Sichi of Landfour.
Anna’s house is a version of the DublDom 2.87, which has a starting price of 2.87 million rubles (about $46,000). The structure features a porch at each end lined in stained plywood. Anna surveys the countryside from under the gabled roof.
To stay near home after her daughter was born, Siegal built a studio at the rear of the property in 2007.
. Daughter Sydney plays with friends in Siegal’s prototype for a prefab playhouse.
Doors recycled from an East Los Angeles grocery store lead to the backyard, which is populated with “stark and minimal” plantings, says Siegal, like the Velvet Elephant Ear.
The east-facing facade opens to an outdoor deck, which is furnished with lounge chairs by Loll Designs.
The Davis family—Everett, Jonathan, Mary Jo, and Dashwood—enjoy a meal around a Room & Board Montego dining table at their home in The Village. Their residence is the “Aria” style, one of four house types available in The Village. At 1,549 square feet, Aria houses feature two bedrooms.
Architect Brian O’Brian and contractor Tom Clancy adapted a central breezeway, a distinguishing feature of dogtrot houses in the southeastern United States, for Joel and Michelle Loblaw’s cottage near the Georgian Bay in Meaford, Ontario.
Joel, a landscape designer, created “a series of outdoor rooms,” including an alfresco kitchen that is sheltered beneath a cedar trellis. The Butterfly chairs are from Fresh Home and Garden in Toronto.
Sling chairs by Garza Marfa flank a Made Goods concrete table.
From there, a private walkway runs to the shore.
Having a strong outdoor element was also important. A 32-foot-wide Solar Innovations sliding door connects the kitchen to a deck and pool.
The windows are by Jeld-Wen, and the metal roof is by Galvalume. “I feel lucky to contribute to the architectural diversity in the neighborhood with something truly of this moment that got built despite the odds,” says Marsha.
Sixteen-foot-tall glass walls, paired with seven-foot overhangs and three-foot solar screens, optimize the home’s passive climate control and capture views of the valley that unfurls across the couple’s 160-acre property.
Gawthrop, an avid hang-glider who is a member of the U.S. Soaring Team, wanted the home to evoke flight; the standing-seam roof from Metal Sale is held up by wire struts to resemble a plane’s wing. In the foreground is the rock formation designer Alan Nicholson had excavated.
A 70-square-foot reflecting pool greets visitors as they approach the home’s elemental north entrance.
Beyond the bocce court is the skate bowl, which the Wessels designed with CA RampWorks.
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Whether it's a backyard patio, an infinity pool, or a rooftop terrace, these modern outdoor spaces add to the richness of daily life. Escape into nature, or get lost in city views. Wherever you are, let these outdoor photos take you somewhere new with inspirational ideas for yards, gardens, outdoor tubs and showers, patios, porches, and decks.

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