Indoor-Outdoor Living
By Paula Hubbs Cohen
Arizona’s nearly year-round indoor/outdoor lifestyle brings a lot of new residents, both full- and part-time, to our world-famous Valley of the Sun. To showcase the ease of blurring the line between indoor and outdoor living, many builders and home designers use architectural elements such as disappearing glass doors that open to courtyards, atriums, and well-appointed alfresco dining and entertaining patios. Particularly during our beautiful winter months, pavered terraces and expansive view verandas are wonderful extensions of a home’s interior living spaces.
Sandra Baldwin of Baldwin Luxury Properties/Equitable Real Estate explains that the basic covered patio has been a part of most Arizona homes for years. “These patios were mostly afterthoughts that were just a place to put some outdoor furniture and store the rolling grill,” she says. “What we see now is the creation of outdoor living rooms where truly fine furniture can be placed, along with complete kitchens, elaborate entertainment systems and even pool tables.”
As Baldwin described, these outdoor living areas run the gamut of covered patios decked out with casual furniture, sturdy umbrellas, and built-in barbecues to magnificent fresh-air kitchens, romantic gazebos, and open-air gathering places—even dance floors. Flagstone, pavers, and varieties of Saltillo tile, including upside-down tile installations, are frequently used to spice up what’s already a luxuriously laid-back ambience. For homes with rustic, Spanish, or hacienda décor, thick-roped sticks, called latillas , laid among the ceiling beams, and stunning lodgelike ceilings made of rich hardwoods add indoor beauty with an outdoor twist.
Here in Arizona, pools are definitely part and parcel of the Southwestern lifestyle. As with patios, pools can be simple and fun, perhaps with a sensuous rolled-bond beam outline or a scattering of boulders. But pools can also be considered “liquid luxury,” with elaborately themed waterfalls, grottos, fiber-optic lighting, and spillover spas. Infinity-edge pools that seem to hover on the horizon are often framed by gas-flamed firepots to create a razzle-dazzle nighttime scene.
Of course, no room indoors or out is complete without furnishings and decorative pieces, and there are plenty of choices to make your out-of-doors living spaces fabulous as well as functional. Energetic color and various types of stone can be used to blend the indoor and outdoor décor, with sophisticated desert sandstone hues, milk-chocolate mochas, or a splash of vibrant colors “spunking up” sedate furniture and accent pieces. Travertine, granite, and Mexican tile can be used almost anywhere, especially on counters, as backsplashes or along baseboards. Dramatic decorative tiles add a playful sense of pizzazz to any room, and visually tie together a home’s interior and exterior décor.
Backyard furniture hasn’t been left out in the cold when it comes to new designs and components, with more colors and faux finishes available each year. These furnishings and appliances are generally made of robust materials, including marine-grade stainless steel designed to withstand our summer heat and sun.
But what does indoor/outdoor living mean in terms of property values? One argument is that when an area is not heated or cooled, it is not livable year-round and is therefore less valuable.
“In the U.S., especially in Arizona, we only count a home’s square footage in terms of climate-controlled space,” Baldwin says. “We don’t include garage space or covered patios as living areas. The rest of the world talks in terms of ‘under roof’—all the space of a home that is covered by the roof. However, that is not necessarily the case with today’s outdoor spaces being designed to make them year-round living areas. Fans, misters, fireplaces and radiant heaters have all been used to make our outdoor living areas more comfortable and more valuable, no matter what the season. All of these features expand the livable square footage of a home, and therefore the value.”