A beautiful landscape sprawled around the pool deck has considerable benefits. It doesn’t just enhance the look of the pool area. A strategically laid out poolside landscape can also offer safety and privacy. It’s a sustainable improvement project that can contribute to the environment. If you’re ready to transform your pool area into an oasis that can rival that of a luxury hotel, read on.
Choosing the Right Plants
The most important thing to consider when choosing plants is the weather conditions of the location. In Texas, heat-tolerant plants are ideal. Luckily, tropical plants are great for the local weather. Ease-of-maintenance is another thing that one has to consider. Evergreen plants save you time from regular maintenance. Avoid plants with foliage that constantly shed. These plants can be used for ground cover, shading and decor. Here are some tropical plants that thrive in Texas:
- Bamboo
- Birds of Paradise
- Cajun Hibiscus
- Hydrangea
- Cut-leaf Philodendron
- African Iris
- Burgundy Cordyline
Incorporating Hardscapes
To provide contrast to the naturally soft features of plants, hardscaping is essential. You can use natural stone to line garden beds. A small pond surrounded by rocks can be an eye-catching statement. Miniature bridges and wooden fences make add a charming rustic flair. A walkway towards the swimming pool naturally draws attention to it and makes it look a lot more inviting.
Putting up Shade Structurer
For hot summer days, keep yourself cool from the blazing sun with shade structures. Shade structures can serve as a lounge while you enjoy a day outdoors. Gazebos, pergolas and or an arbor near the pool deck certainly helps. You can incorporate this into the landscaping by letting flowering vines crawl up the structures. It’s a great use of functional decor that every poolscape should have.
Top It off with Water Features
Water features that connect the poolside landscape to the pool itself add cohesiveness to a poolscape
design. It can be made to take the form of a waterfall or a running stream under a miniature bridge. If you want your water features to be in a separate space, there’s no problem. This can be a great focal point of the poolside landscape.
Poolscaping isn’t enough if your concrete pool deck is in bad shape. Because the pool deck immediately surrounds the pool itself, attention is drawn to it. Beautiful poolscaping should be complemented with a good-looking pool deck. For pool deck resurfacing and restoration services, visit our homepage.
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When you want to make a room look wider than it actually is, you need as much light as possible. You can achieve this with decorative concrete finishes that increase the brightness of a room. A stained concrete floor has a luminous finish that adds brilliance and luster to any area it’s installed on. Another option is epoxy resin coating. Epoxy coated floors are known for its light-reflective quality that can increase brightness by approximately 300%. This is also an energy saving option for those who want to reduce the use of artificial lighting.
Breaking up rooms with different flooring for each area certainly doesn’t help. It makes open spaces look limited with boundaries even without doors or partitions. What you want is a solid and continuous flooring to get a seamless look. You can achieve this with epoxy coating, concrete polishing, and concrete staining. These floor finishes can be applied throughout the whole area and left as is. All you have to do is to choose depending on your concrete flooring needs. Epoxy coating, however, is the best option for an opaque seamless look for floors that need coverage.
The color of your concrete floor is another visual element that you need to keep in mind. Dark colors can make already small spaces look even smaller. As to the use of multiple colors. Varying colors can optically interrupt a continuous flow. If you think a solid color is too plain, acid concrete stains are reactive and have a distinct effect that adds depth and movement without being distracting. So does metallic epoxy that can be left as is or styled to mimic the look of granite. Textures can compensate for the simplicity of monochrome colors.
A popular trend in contemporary homes is leaving a bare concrete floor in all its naked glory. It’s a great affordable option that results in a dramatic effect for that bold but minimalist look. However, we’re not talking about completely leaving your concrete floors as is. Concrete polishing needs to be done to buff out the roughness. Depending on your preference, the floors can be polished to a matte, satin or high-shine finish. The result is a beautiful seamless concrete floor with a natural color and a distinct texture. Talk about industrial-chic.
Mulch is a great material to lay out on the soil Muto keep moisture levels high. Most gardeners use this to enhance the health of the soil and to, eventually, yield healthy and abundant fresh produce. One drawback is that it could stain a concrete driveway, especially the colored mulch variety. When the mulch is new and the rain pours, the color washes off and flows to the driveway. The stain is quite visible and definitely looks unpleasant. If you find mulch stains on your 
If all else fails and the stain is still bothering you, apply a concrete stain to disguise or cover up the stain. You can choose between acid and water-based stain. The acid stain creates random effects while the water-based type provides a more uniform color all throughout the surface. There is a wide selection of colors to choose from, from earth tones to pastels, so you will surely find one that is most suitable for your concrete driveway. Make sure to seal the surface properly to protect the stain and the entire slab from damage.
Carpets harbor dust in high levels. Dust, when disturbed, goes airborne, all the more making allergies worse. The best thing to do is to remove carpets and just replace it with a decorative concrete overlay or coating. It won’t harbor dust or any other allergens like pet fur, fabric fibers, and more.
Decorative concrete offer coatings that have low porosity. This means it won’t have any pores or crevices where dust or dust mites could hide and thrive. Epoxy flooring, for example, is seamless and non-porous so it keeps dust and other allergens on the surface, ready to be swept off. Other coatings can be made non-porous with a layer or two of a special sealer that keeps moisture from penetrating the surface where it could promote mold growth.
Before a concrete acid stain could be used on a concrete surface, the slab needs to be etched. The etching process is necessary to open up the pores of the concrete and enhance proper adhesion. The most common chemical used in etching is muriatic acid. It is important to note that it can deplete lime content in the slab, therefore, creating less pronounced effects.
