How to make an outdoor room in your garden

What’s the ultimate in exterior design for alfresco lifestyle fans? It’s all about creating an indoor room outdoors. Here’s our expert guide into how to make an outdoor room in your garden, a space the people you love will adore gathering in. It isn’t as complicated as you might think, so let’s go!

Why arrange your garden furniture to make a room outdoors? Because alfresco living is a hot trend that only keeps getting hotter. Because it transforms an ordinary space into a cosy place people are automatically drawn to, where there’s seating and all the accessories you need are close by. Garden furniture sits at the heart of how to make an outdoor room in your garden

Our first tip is very simple indeed. Bearing in mind the garden is an extension of your home, you’ll want to bring the feel of the indoors outside. When you’re in the house you probably eat in a different room from your living space, either in the kitchen or dining room. Will you do the same in the garden or create one large entertainment space where people can relax and eat?

It depends how much room you have, of course. But here’s another thought for you. If you’ve ever held a dinner party and spent the entire evening sitting at the table, you’re not alone. When you’re chatting, and the drinks and laughter are flowing, you don’t really want to move locations because it’ll spoil the vibe. Force everyone to get up and move to the living room and you can easily break the magic spell you’ve woven. It’s worth thinking about.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll look at making one multi-purpose outdoor room for alfresco fun.

How to make an outdoor room in your garden – The basics

An outdoor living area should give you all the comfort and style of an indoor living room. You need to consider the weather and how to achieve a decent level of privacy. Your plan should take into account what’s already in your garden – is there an area you naturally gravitate to when you spend time outside? If so, that’s probably your ideal spot. And how about exposure to the sun? Will your outdoor living area maximise the sunshine, would you prefer to be in the shade, or half and half? It’s vital to measure the space carefully too, so you’ll know exactly how much space you have available to fill with garden furniture and dining sets, lighting, heating, cooking gear, and shade.

• Here’s a tip – remember you’ll need to store some of your bits and bobs away in bad weather or over the winter. Do you have the space needed to stash it all safely, somewhere dry, when you’re not using it? If not, think garden storage
• And another tip – When you arrange the space in a circle you create an area that looks bigger as well as being naturally sociable

Inspiring ideas for indoor-outdoor rooms

Once you know where you’re going to set things up and how much room you have, it’s time to get creative. Here are loads of bright ideas for making a stunning garden entertainment area.

Do you want to create a themed garden entertainment area?

Sometimes it’s easiest to go with a theme. It keeps the design side of life simpler, ensures things go together, and makes an exciting and inspiring place to enjoy the fresh air. Here are some ideas for themed indoor-outdoor rooms:

• Exotic Bedouin nomad style, rich in patterned and coloured fabrics, giving you the opportunity to throw loads of lovely material over the furniture, go overboard with cushions, tea light holders, incense sticks, and vividly coloured crockery…
• Cool minimalist styling – the natural wood of the hazel hurdles, subtle grey rattan-look garden furniture, plain outdoor rugs in cream and black, white candles in wooden candle holders…
• Maximalism – where you cram the space with exciting, interesting and unusual bits and bobs: old glass candle holders mixed with carved wooden candlesticks, stone buddhas and animals, festive baubles hanging in the bushes, silk flowers and bunting, flags and mirrors, mix ‘n’ match vintage crockery, richly embroidered tablecloths and napkins…
• Seaside – major on blues, creams, whites and pale greys to create a fresh nautical feel. Add netting scattered with wooden fish. Include smart plain navy blue, white, and blue and white striped cushions. Bring in accents of scarlet for drama and a sail shade or two to create cool spaces and a Mediterranean marina look…

Make the space private

Create privacy. Mark your space out clearly with planters full of tall plants like bamboos to make fresh green walls. Evergreens are good because they’re usually pretty hardy and look good all year round, great when you like to entertain outside through every season.

One of the simplest ways to mark out a space for entertaining outdoors is to focus everything around a pergola or gazebo. Our Pandora Leaf gazebo, by Norfolk Leisure, shown below, gives you exactly that, a permanent structure with a stylish slatted roof to sit under, chill under, put your garden furniture under and enjoy privacy. Sling fabric around the walls for even more seclusion and shade. We also sell dramatic gazebos with LED lighting and curtains, which make stunning entertainment spaces all on their own.

You can also use screens made from bamboo, reeds, or the woven wood versions called ‘hurdles’ to mark out the area and make it look and feel more like a room.

Fabric beach windbreakers are a very simple way to make a room in your garden, either colourful or plain and subtle. Buy four large ones to make an instant entertainment area with bright borders, not unlike the open air bars and eateries you see at music festivals. Very cool.

How to make an outdoor room in your garden – Get the garden furniture right

You’ve marked out a suitable space and decided how to keep things private. Now you need garden furniture. There’s a massive choice, everything from cool swing chairs and bistro sets to enormous outdoor furniture sets with seating for eight or more. Measure at least twice so you know for certain you have enough room for the items you want, as well as enough space around them for people to come and go without falling over each other or tripping over the furniture.

The main thing is to create the most relaxing environment for the type of occasion you enjoy best. How many people will be using the furniture? Will you be eating outside frequently, or more likely to hold boozy afternoons and evenings with snacks than full-on cooking? That’ll help you decide whether you need outdoor sofa and chairs, an outdoor dining set, or both.

Will there be kids around or will you be entertaining adults only? How many seats do you need, and how much table space? If it varies widely depending on the occasion, you might want to go for modular garden furniture with the flexibility to seat just a few people, extending to seat more when you need to. Or foldable garden furniture you can store easily, with spares stashed away just in case.

Colour matters. That’s why we’ve carefully chosen such a wide range of dark grey to pale grey garden furniture, along with some white versions. Grey goes with any colour. It never clashes. It always looks cool and calm and collected. Very smart. If you want to add colour to match or contrast, adding extra interest and even more comfort, you can always add your own hand-made or bought scatter cushions and floor cushions.

Gorgeous garden rugs

Spice up your patio or lawn with a collection of beautiful outdoor garden rugs. They add colour and fun to a garden entertainment space, as well as extra comfort. Great when you like to go barefoot, perfect when some of you like to lounge on the ground. There are some gorgeous garden rugs around in exciting designs.

Light your space up after dusk

There’s one sure-fire way to add instant atmosphere once evening starts to fall, and it’s light. It isn’t safe to have naked flames outdoors during the dramatic summer heatwaves we’ve been having, simply because everything is tinder-dry, but a candle lamp is a great solution. Our beautiful wooden candle lamps contain candles safely with no chance of setting your garden or guests on fire! When the weather’s less dangerously dry you can stand tea lights in containers, or hang colourful or plain glass candle holders from bushes, walls and trees.

Electric outdoor lighting is a good idea, fitted by an electrician as a permanent feature or simple plug-in strings of tiny lights. Solar garden lights are also a goodie, available in a multitude of designs and types. These days they need a lot less sunlight than they used to to charge up, delivering twinkly drama after dusk even when the weather’s been dull.

Just remember to turn the garden lighting off when you finally go indoors, so it doesn’t disturb the wildlife and confuse your plants.

How to make an outdoor room in your garden – Provide shade

Sunshine is heavenly. But you also need to provide shade for people to retreat into if it gets a bit much. Shade sails are fantastic, available in every imaginable colour and lovely to look at. If you’re skilled with sewing machine you can make your own sail shades using sail fabric from a boat supplies outlet, or thick, creamy canvas from an art shop.

There’s more to garden shade than shade sails, of course. We sell a small yet wonderful choice of garden parasols and garden umbrellas, some with a cantilever mechanism so you can angle them however you like. One version attaches to a wall so doesn’t take up any floor room, perfect for smaller gardens.

Add a focal point – Think fire, think awesome food

Make your garden dining table the focal point of the space if you like. Alternatively, add fire for an instant welcome, warmth, and excitement. Everyone loves real flames and there’s a great choice of ways to achieve it.

• A metal chiminea burns very hot and takes big fires, radiating warmth out into the space. You can cook BBQ food on most of them
• A clay chiminea demands a much smaller fire. The chiminea body heats up like a massive radiator to keep everyone cosy, and its very effective indeed. They’re often perfect for BBQ-style cooking, too
• A fire pit or firebowl delivers lots of light, heat, and drama
• A BBQ focuses on cooking but also gives you gorgeous flickering flames to gather around
• An outdoor oven gives you all the cooking functionality you could possibly need. The biggest ones come with a built-in fridge, storage, multiple grills, and enormous cooking surfaces, ideal when you love to prepare complex dishes for loads of people
• A simple open fire is perfect. Just make sure it’s safely contained and can’t spread

If people smoke, don’t forget ashtrays filled with sand – much better than fag ends dropped all over the place!

And finally… accessorise!

You’ve made a cool garden room with lots of privacy, every imaginable comfort, lighting, shade, and a fire as a focal point and a way to cook. What’s next? This is the really fun bit. It’s time to accessorise. Here are some creative ideas to make your outdoor entertainment space more interesting and exciting:

• Add sound – maybe a string of ethic bells or some mellow, tinkling wind chimes
• Include music – Perhaps open a window so you can hear the music system indoors, or hook up your mobile to speakers outside
• Add scent – how about some big citronella candles to create a lovely lemony scent as well as driving insects away? Or scented planting? Nicotina, curry plant, lavender and jasmine all smell fabulous
• Add a water feature – a small garden water feature, a table fountain, or simply an attractive pottery container filled with water will add even more magic to the space
• Put a vase of fresh flowers or greenery on the dining table
• Hang mirrors to provide exciting reflected views, reflect splashes of light, and make the space feel bigger
• Fill old watering cans and buckets with greenery and flowers, dotting them around the space
• Tie ribbons in bows to the trees and bushes so they flutter in the breeze
• Add butterflies on sticks
• String up some bunting for a funky festival look

Are you inspired by our tips about how to make an outdoor room in your garden? We hope so! We wish you great times creating an outdoor room that’ll make your guests feel welcome and cosy, and many happy occasions enjoying the results with the people you love.