Exploring Ideas: Designing Outdoor Living Spaces
It’s no secret that, in winter, everything tends to turn the same color: gray. Gloomy gray skies hover over gray, salt-encrusted roads and cars, and gray landscapes with leafless gray trees and grayish-green grass just waiting for warmer weather to be able to flourish, once again. Is there any way to brighten up this gray landscape, then? Or are you stuck dreaming of a green spring, or planning a quick trip to someplace tropical? The answer is that you can, absolutely, transform your landscape into one of color, even in the coldest and darkest months of winter.
Make Your House a Home of Color
When some people think of adding color to the exterior of their home, they think of an eccentric artist’s home splashed with every color under the sun. While this certainly isn’t bad, if that’s your style, if something more traditional is more to your liking, you can still brighten it up with a few pops of well-chosen color. For example, if you have a fence on your property, consider a beautiful, deep blue to liven it up. Or, perhaps you have a large front door that would benefit from a handsome red color, or even a daring yellow. There are plenty of ways to brighten up your home without having it look like a children’s painting.
Bring the Inside, Out
Around here, there are likely to be plenty of mild winter days mixed with all the gloomy, cold, and miserable ones. Why not make the most of your outdoor space all-year-round by having weather-appropriate activities for you and your family to enjoy. A perfect example would be a fire pit, so that everyone can enjoy warm conversations, and maybe even a s’more or two, around a glowing orange and yellow fire. Another idea would be to bring in a large propane heater to place on your patio, so that you can keep warm while still enjoying all your normal outdoor activities.
Plants are for Winter, Too
Nothing can more quickly add a pop of color to your landscape than a holly bush. When those beautiful berries turn red, you’re instantly rewarded with a beautiful point of interest, and a reprieve from the relentless grays and browns. In addition, you can count on cool-weather plants, such as Camellias and Hellebores, to bring beautiful blooms to your outdoor retreat, all winter long. As Hellebores show off their beautiful colors, you can enjoy the fact that, not only are they providing colorful beauty during the gray winter, they’re also hinting at the soon-coming Spring.
Winter can be quite gray, and in many places you go, it will still be gray, no matter what you do. For your own home, however, you can make it a beautiful, colorful retreat that serves as an escape from the monotonous conditions that so often come.
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