Terraced Patio Design with Swimming Pool in Austin, Texas

I love to design backyard getaways. Let's face it, patios with swimming pools, hot tubs, outdoor bars, ones with all the amenities are not only fun to look at, but they are great to dream about and pull ideas from.  This patio design was for a customer building a new home on 50 acres in Austin, Texas, so we basically working with a blank slate.

The customer had two stipulations as far as the design.  They wanted a terraced patio with the swimming pool on the lower terrace accessible from the walkout basement and the dining and outdoor bar on the upper terrace which could be accessed from the main living area.  The other stipulation was they wanted the pool patio to be raised 16" - 18" from ground level.

Other than those two items, they gave us complete freedom to design a patio that was beautiful, functional and one that would bring out the "oohs and aahs" from their Texas friends.

We felt the shape of their patio should have lots of arcs and curves since they were installing a curvy swimming pool, but we wanted to add some unique features to the geometry. So we created two overlapping circles. One centered around the hot tub that created the shape for a section of the retaining wall and two paved steps leading off the hot tub patio. The other centered around the upper dining area that created the shapes for the lower tiered retaining wall, the paved stairwell, the dining area itself and two steps leading up to the outdoor bar. The result was subtle, but it created some interesting arcs and lines on the patio.

We also skewed the pool and designed the pool patio to be large enough to add plenty of furniture for entertaining.

We struggled a little bit when we go to the hot tub patio. The problem was we had this 7' plus tall retaining wall that was way overbearing for this area. So as you can see we bumped out a lower section of the retaining wall creating a seating wall around the hot tub. The other step we took to reduce some of the wall height was we raised the hot tub patio 16" and added stone to the face of the pool wall, which also gave us a pretty cool effect to the pool.

The paved spiral steps leading between the two terraced patios generated a softer staircase and added a little more interest to the the large patio. Also notice how we used a darker paver to contrast the lighter retaining wall block. Trust me when I say this, it's all the little ideas that make a patio look fantastic. And larger patios need more little ideas.

The dining area was designed into the upper terrace to make access to the main floor kitchen area more convenient. We also placed it right up against the retaining wall overlooking the pool patio.

A backyard getaway would not be complete without an outdoor bar and not just any bar, but a covered bar. The bar features an octagon shape, stone face, granite countertops, drop in grill, outdoor refrigerator and lots of seating for guests.

This was just one of those projects that was enjoyable to design. We hope we were able to provide some good patio ideas for your terraced patio with swimming pool.

Visit our Custom Designing page to find out more how we can help you bring your patio ideas to life.

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