Before and After: 3 Homes That Optimize Indoor-Outdoor Flow

1. Decks and Porches Encourage an Indoor-Outdoor Lifestyle

Deck at a Glance
Who lives here: A woman with three sons in college and high school
Location: Cornelius, North Carolina
Size: 1,043 square feet (97 square meters)
Designer: Sandy Kritzinger of Collaborative Interior Design

Before: Located on North Carolina’s Lake Norman, this home had an expansive deck, but it didn’t maximize the water views. And it didn’t flow with the home or feel connected to the landscape. The family wanted a more versatile design that would allow them to enjoy an indoor-outdoor lifestyle for at least three seasons.

After: Interior designer Sandy Kritzinger worked with the homeowners to find a balance between covered porches, an open deck and screened areas. She divided the deck into three sections that relate to the interiors and views. To the left is a covered dining area and outdoor kitchen, located directly off their indoor counterparts. In the center is an open sun deck, located off the indoor living room. To the right is a covered lounge with an outdoor fireplace and retractable screens. It is located directly off the primary bedroom.

The exterior of the house and the porch, deck spaces and lattice are all a matching charcoal tone. This allows the facade to fade into the background of the trees, creating a pleasing view from the lake. The new staircase to the yard is unobtrusive and flows right into a path to the dock.

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Here’s a closer look at the easy flow and views between the indoor and outdoor dining rooms.

Large sliding glass doors provide easy access from the bedroom to the outdoor lounge and the views. Retractable screens allow the homeowners to open up the lounge to a larger group during parties. The blinds on either side of the fireplace allow breezes and light through while providing privacy from the neighbors.

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2. A Renovation Engages Porches and the Backyard

Yard at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple and their daughter and son
Lot size: About two-thirds of an acre, the bulk of which is the backyard
Location: Austin, Texas
Architect: Stewart Davis of CG&S Design-Build
Landscape contractor: Pearson Landscape Services

Before: Located along Barton Creek, this family of four’s Austin, Texas, backyard had lots of potential. But a slope and an awkward flow between the house and the landscape contributed to its uninviting feel. The pros at CG&S Design-Build conjured up a design that includes a new patio, a flat play area, an outdoor kitchen with an Argentine grill, and a reconfigured deck and stairway that provide an easy flow to the backyard.

This photo shows the slope of the yard and the way the deck on the right was cut off from the rest of the yard by scruffy plantings. There wasn’t any sort of flow between the home’s decks and the yard. Also, grilling is important to this family, particularly to the husband, but his grilling area was off the side of the house, cut off from the rest of the family. This left him feeling lonely and forgotten while he prepared their meals.

After: There’s no use in having a strong indoor-outdoor flow if you have an uninviting yard. Architect Stewart Davis came up with the conceptual drawings for a functional and inviting landscape, then handed them off to the landscape contractors at Pearson Landscape Services. They graded the yard to create a flat circular play area and an adjacent patio with an outdoor kitchen. The new steps, retaining walls and patio flagstones are local Texas Hill Country limestone. These stones anchor the yard in the geology of the region.

The yard design is also rooted in the existing trees. While local ordinances required the team to go to great lengths to preserve the live oak (Quercus virginiana) seen beyond the bar, it was well worth it. Not only is the tree one of the yard’s major assets, but having to tweak the plans around it fully engaged it as part of the design.

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Before: There were some odd connections between the house, the decks and the yard. The upper deck, seen here, was off a game room. An adjacent staircase led down to another small deck below. From there, a staircase led down to the yard.

The reconfigured staircase also provided a spot for a flat-screen TV to sit unobtrusively yet within view of the grilling enthusiast. On big-game days, the screen is a must-have.

The outdoor kitchen includes a sink, a small fridge, a gas grill and a wood-burning Argentine grill. Local Lueders limestone shelves tie the outdoor kitchen to the patio. But more important, this area includes a hangout space so that the whole family can be together during grilling time. The retaining walls and stairs create a pleasing transition from this flat area to the rest of the sloped yard.

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3. Outdoor Rooms Relate to the Land, the Architecture and One Another

Yard at a Glance
Who lives here: A graphic designer, a kindergarten teacher and their three young children
Location: Lafayette, California
Lot size: A half-acre
Designers: Alan Ohashi, Julia Arria and Philip Liang of ODS Architecture (architecture and landscape architecture); Joseph Huettl of Huettl Landscape Architecture (landscape architecture)

Before: An important aspect of renovating and adding on to this midcentury modern home in Lafayette, California, was creating beautiful and functional outdoor spaces that would relate to the architecture. And that meant creating a stronger flow around and through the property. The journey from the driveway to the front door was a hodgepodge, and there wasn’t any circulation out to the sidewalk and street.

Out front, one large oak perforated the roofline of the house, and another had heavy branches that dangled precariously over the house. These not only were structural hazards but made the house more vulnerable to wildfires.

After: New stairs and poured-in-place concrete paver pathways create a strong front entry experience. The new staircase is oriented toward the driveway, and the railings have metal frames with horizontal wood slats. “They blend in well with the horizontal tongue-and-groove siding,” architect Julia Arria says. The pavers and pathways repeat the straight lines of the architecture, while the plantings add contrasting organic shapes.

Around the corner from the deck, a wide staircase leads to a private patio off the primary bedroom. The architects pushed back the steep hill with a terraced landscape to make room for this upper patio. The vertical slats on the retaining walls and Cor-Ten steel planters atop them echo the architecture of the house.

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The bedroom has strong visual connections to the private patio and terraces through large windows and a deep window seat.

Because the homeowners plan to add a spa on the private patio someday, the architects added an exterior door to the patio in the en suite bathroom. This will make it a straight shot from the outdoor spa to the indoor shower. Considering practical needs like this is an important part of forging functional indoor-outdoor connections.

Beyond the dining deck is the main outdoor lounge area. “These clients love to entertain, so we wanted to create three to four different outdoor areas for them to do so,” Arria says. The plans also included connecting the outdoor rooms through staircases and terraces, such as the wide stairs between the primary bedroom’s private patio and the dining deck. There are also stairs to the left that lead to a private garden off a new lower-level office space.

Out at the fire pit, the stairs that connect the deck and the circular lounge area can double as extra seating. So can the curved concrete walls. This photo also shows how the entire backyard is now nestled into the hill in a pleasing way.

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