Creating a home and backyard that fits your needs and brings you and your family comfort and relaxation is one of the many ways to enjoy your home. With a bit of planning and a dose of creativity, you can turn your backyard into a personal oasis to gather and enjoy time together. Here are four ways to customize your home and yard to make them truly your own.
Why Customize Your Home and Yard?
Tailoring your home and yard to your tastes can pay off in many ways, and it does not have to cost you a lot of money to add some custom flair.
Improvements to your yard can increase its functionality, making it more usable for you and your family. You may also desire more privacy or security, especially if you have pets or small children and want a safe, enclosed place for them to enjoy.
You can also increase your home’s value by customizing your yard. Features can include creating a decorative focal point in your yard, an entertainment area for parties and bar-b-ques, and integrating sustainable features such as native plants, drought-tolerant landscaping, a built-in composting area, and planter boxes for a veggie garden.
Which Features Are Best for Entertaining?
Enhancing your home’s yard to create an entertainment area does not need to cost much money. Some of the top features that add value to your home include outdoor living spaces like a deck or patio, an outdoor cooking area such as a kitchen or grill, a fire pit, water features, and electrical features such as custom lighting.
A deeper look at the following four ideas can help you integrate them into your space.
1. Add Some Heat
Adding some warmth is one of the easiest ways to create ambiance in your yard. You can use natural stones from your yard and build a simple firepit, have one made, purchase one or go all the way and construct an outdoor stone fireplace, complete with a mantle and chimney.
When you add a firepit to your backyard, it immediately becomes a gathering spot. Imagine roasting marshmallows and hot dogs, grilling burgers, and telling ghost stories at night by the crackling flames.
2. Add Outdoor Seating
Your yard might be beautiful, but it’s not easy to entice people to hang out if they have nowhere to sit. Seating can be as simple as folding chairs or poolside loungers. You can add benches and a picnic-style table. If you add an umbrella or two, your yard becomes usable even when the sun is bright during the heat of summer. If you have seating inside for parties, consider orienting your yard so that you can guide the flow of guests from indoors to outdoors with seating and outdoor tables arranged just outside of the doors leading to your yard.
Include useful features like cooler chests to hold ice and frosty beverages, along with your outdoor seating. For a great conversation piece and a non-slip top for your coolers, consider getting custom cooler pads for the tops of all your ice chests. Add a fun party slogan, your family’s name, or a “Welcome!” message. Coolers are always useful, and adding a customized top pad to a cooler makes it an excellent gift for a new neighbor or a conversation piece for your yard.
3. Optimize Your Yard for Entertaining
You can easily customize the lighting in your yard to provide a festive air and help guests feel relaxed and comfortable while hanging out after sunset. Try adding various types of outdoor lighting in different areas of your yard.
Thoughtful placement of lights can make your yard and landscaping come to life. Place strings of tiny white lights in trees, a string or two of Edison-style bulb lights hanging overhead, solar lights along the perimeter of your yard, and directional uplighting to highlight features such as trees once the sun goes down.
4. Add an Outdoor Bar
Imagine the fun of having a walk-up bar in your backyard for entertaining guests during summer parties and bar-b-ques. You can set things up for self-service or have someone volunteer to bartend. A built-in bar can go a few steps further and become a built-in kitchen, complete with a more extended bar to serve food. The possibilities are endless and limited only by your budget and your imagination.
Conclusion
Customizing your home and backyard can add to the enjoyment of your home, its desirability, and its resale value. With the help of your imagination and some creativity, you can add features that don’t break your budget, do a full-scale remodel to transform your home or yard entirely or do anything in between.
Whether you create a home and yard for your family or to share with guests, it’s nice to come home to a place that has your personal stamp on it and provides a vacation feel without having to go anywhere else.
