Seasonal Outdoor Decorating Tips and Tricks
Your home’s decor should reflect each season, from cozy winter accents to festive spring decorations and serene summertime decor. However, porches, gardens and patios should also benefit from seasonal updates to stay current with living trends.
Just a few easy outdoor decorating tricks can transform your patio, deck, or garden into an inviting retreat for every season of the year.
Lighting
Lighting plays a central role in outdoor decorating and, like interior decorations, can be as subtle or noticeable as desired. Not only essential for safety and security reasons, outdoor lighting also acts as an eye-catcher that draws the eye and sets an enjoyable or festive mood.
Seasonal outdoor decorating can be an enjoyable way to welcome spring, summer, fall and winter with style. Brightly-colored flowering shrubs in your garden may be all it takes to announce warmer temperatures while adding festive wreaths on front doors can add autumnal or holiday themes into al fresco spaces.
Light fixtures that cast a broad beam work best as entryway lights to illuminate guests as they approach your front porch, while silhouette lighting with Kichler floodlights and spotlights is ideal for creating mesmerizing shadow effects on walls or other flat surfaces.
An inviting outdoor area makes for an inviting space to meet family and friends, providing the ideal place for parties. Proper lighting can set a festive or romantic ambiance or simply make evening barbecues feel more intimate.
As soon as the sun goes down, a well-lit deck or patio can quickly transform into an inviting space for dining al fresco, entertaining friends or simply lounging around. To add seasonal color and holiday spirit, why not display some brightly lit trees or shrubs adorned with ornaments for instant warmth and cheer.
To create an earthy and natural ambience in your yard, choose furniture made of wood or rattan that matches the colors in your landscape. Place table arrangements with natural elements like sage or eucalyptus branches, bundles of herbs, ornamental grasses or branches of berries as table settings on tables. Hang bird feeders and hummingbird feeders to keep the yard full of colorful birds!
Plants
Switching out draperies, rugs and linens to reflect the seasons is a time-honored decorating strategy that once served a practical purpose–heavier fabrics kept homes cool while lighter fabrics allowed breezes in. Now this same concept can be applied to outdoor decorating as well, creating cozy al fresco spaces suitable for every season!
Utilizing plants to add seasonal color, texture and interest is an easy and cost-effective way to transform outdoor seating areas. A combination of wrought iron gates with weathered wood accents creates a neutral yet earthy ambiance when combined with low maintenance plants such as agaves. By including wooden furniture pieces like benches and chairs in this arrangement, relaxation becomes even easier!
Repurposed items make ideal planters, like this idea from @sonja_ols of using old metal watering cans and hollowed-out logs as planters for flowers and greenery. Grouping various heights of tall and short plants together adds contrast, visual interest and pops of color into any room; adding flowers adds another pop. For an organic touch add native or drought-tolerant plants with low maintenance needs such as manzanita branches inserted into an antique European olive bucket add an organic look that provides contrast with native species or drought tolerant native or drought tolerant natives – like manzanita branches into an olive bucket brings organic to this vignette!
Water Features
Water features have long been recognized to improve outdoor living spaces, creating stunning sanctuaries that add visual interest and increase curb appeal and value of properties. At California Exteriors, our landscape design experts include these elements into their designs to create tranquil environments that promote relaxation; its soothing sounds serve as natural soundtrack that encourage conversations or quiet contemplation.
Fountains are an elegant way to bring the soothing sound of running water into any outdoor space, adding ambience with each sound of trickling water. There is a fountain size and style suitable for every outdoor area imaginable; choose one from among birdbaths without pumps or filters or custom outdoor water tables featuring pondless streams that can be customized specifically to match the style or garden of any given space.
Fountains can be installed either underground or above-ground depending on your desired landscape needs and preferences. For low maintenance requirements, stone or concrete fountains with organic finishes that blend in seamlessly with your yard’s greenery may be best. To create an eye-catching feature that provides relaxation while simultaneously being visually striking, select narrow pools of water lined with plants such as evergreens or hostas to form an eye-catching and visually captivating spectacle.
Add an eye-catching element to an existing fountain or pond by including a figurine around its spigot. These accessories add a whimsical and personalized touch, such as this fish-like creature which elevates its look and makes your outdoor decor one-of-a-kind.
Water features offer more than aesthetic and visual benefits – they also bring numerous other advantages. The soothing calming effect of trickling water has been scientifically proven to reduce stress levels, while bubbling fountains captivate and delight people of all ages. Furthermore, evaporation of water cools surrounding areas by eliminating heat and decreasing humidity levels.
Though water features can add elegance and charm to any landscape, for optimal enjoyment they must be integrated thoughtfully into it. Consideration should be given to foot traffic flow, arrangement of hardscape and greenery elements, as well as regular maintenance to ensure they do not disrupt or detract from its beauty.
Mirrors
Mirrors are often underestimated decorative pieces for garden walls and fences, helping make gardens appear larger while showing off the best angles of planting. Mirrors also make an excellent solution when climbing plants would otherwise take over an unusable space (though climbers could still be used behind mirrors during summer to maximize impact).
Salvage yards offer the ideal place to find inexpensive mirrors to use in the garden, though be aware that outdoor ones need to be weatherproofed so as not to become damaged in wet or windy conditions. Mirrors with trompe l’oeil effects – particularly ones resembling doors left open – add an extra dimension by encouraging visitors to travel through it with both their bodies or just visually.
For an elegant country garden aesthetic, pair an antique louvred mirror with the soft hues of Dahlias ‘Cafe au Lait’ and Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Apricot Lemon’ dahlias as part of a Cottage Garden wall display surrounded by dahlias in subtle colors such as Cafe au Lait and Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Apricot Lemon’ Cosmos bipinnatus Cosmos bipinnatus „Apricot Lemon.” Alternatively, create rustic courtyard settings by pairing two mirrors together: one is made of iron while the other made of simple rectangular glass materials; another solution would be to hang wrought iron mirror with simple rectangular glass mirroring techniques as part of this combination of rustic courtyard style creation: pair one wrought iron wall mirror with simple rectangular glass one; this creates rustic courtyard atmosphere!