You’ve worked hard to create an interior space that conveys your sense of style. Your favourite finishes, textures and colours offer a sense of place that’s uniquely you. Your outdoor living space needs to be an extension — or an echo — from your house’s interior design, and color is an element that can easily be carried outdoors in hardscape materials, furnishings, decorative accents and, of course, plants. By employing a dominant signature color, you can produce a gorgeous, cohesive search for your entire living environment.
Spinnaker Development
1. Start your color story with your house’s architecture. Your permanent landscape attributes — patios, planters, retaining walls, fences and other structures — should coordinate with your house’s facade. Select your signature color to match or replicate the paint, stain or natural finish of your house’s exterior.
The exterior space featured here uses beautiful stone that includes a gray-taupe color, like the home’s shingles at its core, but expands and warms the palette in a natural and organic manner. Similar neutral colors are used for the furniture and countertops. Pale blue as an accent color adds just the right amount of interest without disrupting the overall sense of calm.
A neutral plant type of silvery blue isn’t hard to replicate, particularly in areas with lots of sunlight. Most plants with blue or gray foliage thrive in full sunlight, but the colours — reminiscent of ice and water — are visually cooling. Believe succulents, herbs and grasses.
Gordon + Greineder
2. Expand from your house’s interior color palette. Semienclosed outdoor spaces, such as this one, that are immediately adjacent to the house ought to have a color connection that flows seamlessly from one distance to another. It needn’t be the specific colour; a lighter shade or darker colour would work well, also.
The delicate yellow light of this outdoor room makes it inviting and warm. The living space is visually expanded by showcasing a yellow flowery planting at the conclusion of the framed vista.
Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC
3. Use a strong color to combine a large garden space. Silvery lambs’ ears echo the color of the house’s facade and serve as a base for the backyard in this example.
Vibrant purple is the dominant signature color that’s used to carry the eye over a large, complex planting. Purple is a cool hue that harmonizes well with silver-gray.
Select a flower or foliage color that can be interpreted through distinct plants based on bloom period and growing conditions, such as microclimates or hydrozones.
Tommy Chambers Interiors, Inc..
In a smaller space, in this way courtyard, one particular plant might be all you want. The rounded blue hydrangeas are a gorgeous complement to the blue-tiled fountain. Employed repeatedly as a touch plant, they also combine the diverse foliage plantings in the backyard.
Jamie Herzlinger
4. Choose a color for high play. White and red comparison the gorgeous natural environment of this home to the extreme.
The muted greens and browns of the desert scene act as a backdrop here, while the home and outside living space take centre stage. White, as an echo of the property’s color, is utilized like accent marks to draw the eye through the space and visually enlarge it. The limited palette of purple and white petunias and crimson Pelargoniums is utilized to great effect in echoing the colours and the design of the pool furniture.
Remarkable Gardens
This water and fire feature stands out dramatically as a focal point — thanks, in fantastic part, to its color. Red is the most powerful color in the landscape due to its high contrast to green. (They’re opposites on the color wheel)
Additionally, this arrangement is well anchored into its outside environment with a color echo via plant foliage. The bold red foliage of New Zealand flax (Phormium spp) is a perfect match for the hardscape.
Hursthouse Landscape Architects and Contractors
5. Choose a color for nighttime viewing. If you love using your outside living space primarily in the day, choose a hue that’s visible in low light. White, silver, yellow and light pastels are the easiest colours for the human eye to watch at dusk. Pale, smooth hardscape surfaces reflect light and are safer to use. Light flowers or variegated foliage in the backyard will add depth to the landscape. Appreciate darker, richer colors as accents.
