By Mike Farley

With increasing frequency, I’ve been getting involved in creating total, comprehensive backyard designs for my clients. From the pool and spa to shade structures and pool houses, from planting plans to entertainment areas and outdoor kitchens, if they want it, I’m at the ready to meet all of their needs.

I love this trend, partly because it enables me to

These days, using LED lights to illuminate rectangular or kidney-shaped pools is pretty simple: You just space the fixtures out at proper intervals on a wall facing away from prime viewing spots inside the house and on deck, specify the appropriate wattage, hook them up to a suitable control system and step back to bask in the warm nighttime glow.

But that sense of routine quickly disappears when

The advent of underwater LED lighting has changed the way we look at and perceive swimming pools and spas once the sun goes down. In contrast to past days, when a single incandescent light blasted the eyes of anyone nearby, lighting is now a far subtler design feature – an intricate, integral part of a pool’s aesthetic presence and the key facilitator in creating an ideal backyard ambiance once the sun goes down.

But LED technology brings a learning curve with it – one that is even more of a challenge in an era when pool designs are increasingly dynamic and complex. And no matter whether you’re a veteran or a

The lighting of pools is much more challenging than it once was, notes Graham Orme, mostly because their contours are so much more intricate than they were even 20 years ago.  Here, he starts a new series that will guide all of us toward more 'enlightened' results.

With increasing frequency, I’m running into higher-end clients who lead hectic 9-to-5 lives – too packed for them to be able to enjoy the swimming pool we’re proposing to build with much more than holiday-weekend frequency.  Obviously, the key with these homeowners is making certain the pool we’re discussing is something they can appreciate and enjoy 24 hours a day – whenever they happen to be home and can be drawn out into a

By Mike Farley

This article concludes a little series I’ve been doing that feature bowls in association with my pool and spa designs.  The first two were about water bowls in very different applications.  This one is about fire bowls and, in greater detail, about materials you can put in them to cover the burners, disperse the flames and make them look good even when

By Paolo Benedetti

There’s a common misperception among designers and builders whose projects carry them beyond a pool and spa and out into the landscape:  In large numbers, these professionals believe that low-voltage landscape lighting systems are perfectly safe for use in close proximity to the water.

The truth of the matter is that the National Electric Code (NEC) has defined an exclusionary zone of ten feet around pools and spas for these fixtures!

That’s right:  Even with low-voltage

It’s a simple fact:  No matter where you are on the globe, ultimately it’s dark exactly half the time.  So no matter how beautiful your watershapes may be, if you don’t fully consider lighting as a key component of your projects, you may be robbing your work of half its potential for pleasing your clients.  

That makes it a bottom-line issue, because lighting adds real value to most any watershape installation with a long list of benefits.  For starters, it extends the time a watershape can be used beyond daylight hours.  It also adds

By David Tisherman

I truly enjoy including shade structures in my designs.  Whether I’m working with an overhang, an arbor, a loggia, a pergola or some other structure (and, yes, they are all different), I see them as ways to create visual extensions of a house – and wonderful places to enjoy being next to the water.

There is, of course, as much art and skill to designing and installing the right shade structure as there is to setting up all of the other features of a great backyard.  Done well, a structure that projects out from a house will pull your eye from inside to outside while it provides relief from the sun.  Similarly, freestanding shade structures

I love the versatility of fiberoptic lighting:  The technology works equally well in conjunction with landscaping or architectural features, and because there’s no electrical current to worry about at the light fixtures themselves, they’re a natural around water.  

Better yet, you can use fiberoptics to create traditional point-light sources, or you can set them up as mellow bands of light over long stretches.  I don’t use fiberoptics on every job, but when the situation is right and the customer is willing, I’m eager to dig in and design a system that will wow them for years to come.

As is true with any lighting system, the main reason to use fiberoptics is