Locating Your Outdoor Living Room
The ideal outdoor living room should be located where it is easily accessible to the indoor living rooms. In this manner, it is always a joy to look toward providing a year-round picture of beauty to the rest of the home. Instead of thinking of it as an independent unit, we consider the outdoor living room to be an extension of the house. Its margins a continuation of the lines of the house and in design it may be made to appear attached to it.
Keep in mind that our outdoor living room should be an integral part of the home grounds, not superimposed as an afterthought. Although we think of the outdoor room as an extension of the rooms of the home, this is by no means a fixed rule for sometimes our garden living room can be reached by a garden path or may even terminate a vista. Quite often an outdoor garden that unfolds unexpectedly has a surprise value that increases its interest; divisions of areas by hedges or fences have a certain charm not possessed by an undivided garden.
Of course, if we plan before the house has been located and construction begun, we can take advantage of every opportunity our lot affords and try out any number of arrangements until the one best suited to our needs is determined. One simple method that proves helpful when planning before the house is built is to cut out small shapes of cardboard to scale, representing the house, garage, and other buildings, and move them about on the plot map until a happy solution suggests itself. If the lot is an unusual one, either in shape or topography, there is all the more opportunity to accomplish something really fine in our landscape design. Often an outdoor living room that we reach by steps or one which unfolds itself below as a sunken garden will prove to be a delightful solution to our problem.
If there is a preference of exposures, the east, south, or west are generally preferable to a northern exposure, although climatic conditions may make certain exposures preferable to others in certain localities.
When our home is already built with established walks and drives, these fixed elements in our plan actually simplify any problems.
If the home is so planned that there is no means of direct entrance to the logical site for the outdoor living room, a window may be changed into a doorway to make direct entrance possible. It is unpleasant to have to go out the front door and around the house in order to reach the garden room. The average-sized lot usually offers only one available space for our garden room and that is to the rear of the house. This, after all, is quite the logical place as the desired privacy can be secured with minimum effort as the house itself acts as a screen from the street.
Even a very small rear or side yard has possibilities for outdoor living room development and there are few lots that cannot enjoy the advantages of an added living room outdoors. If the lot is ample in width, it is possible to develop spacious connecting rooms that will increase the interest, beauty, and variety of the landscape scheme. The house door that opens onto the outdoor living room, or a window that would offer the most important view of the proposed development, might well be featured in the design of the outdoor room. Large picture windows providing “living art” of scenic views might likewise be featured in any house on the outdoor living room side to bring the whole garden scene into the home. A porch or terrace also makes a pleasing transit between house and outdoor living room and may be made to play an important part in the design.
With these points in mind we can establish the general area for our outdoor living room, its relation to the house and the means of entering or approaching it. Then, before deciding whether our outdoor room will be planned along formal or informal lines, we should establish the axis line, for that is the first important element to establish in making a plan for any type of outdoor room.
An axis is an imaginary line around which our scheme centers, usually determined by such features as windows, doorways, or terrace steps. In formal outdoor living room design, various elements center on the axis line -- or axis lines, as there may be more than one when minor axis lines exist at right angles to the major axis line. In informal design, the axis line may center on some feature such as a pool or garden house but the elements of the design have an informal rather than geometric balance.