How to Bring Your Interior Design Style Outdoors, According to Pros

When creating a beautiful outdoor space, you often start with an empty space. Expansive backyards, empty decks, and beautiful front porches are easy to fill with plants, lighting, and furniture.

If you ever looked around your home and wondered what you can do to improve your design, look no further. The space might not be begging for an extensive renovation or a major furniture overhaul—it can simply come down to styling.

For the first time in decades I heard a cuckoo just the other day, its pealing “Wuck-Koo” ringing out so loudly nearby that I felt a quick, sharp jolt of joy at being so closely in its presence. Once a common sound, the distinctive call of this fleeting seasonal migrant from tropical Africa is traditionally believed to signal the arrival of spring. But as is true of so many other once-common species of birds, its numbers, which are down by an estimated 27 per cent since the early 1970s, have been in slow but steady decline for decades.

Interior design mistakes run the gamut from problems like imperfectly laid flooring (hello, tripping hazards) to lesser issues like getting the wrong size living room rug. Even if you can't quite put your finger on what's feeling wrong in a certain space, it'll likely stem from the most typical faux pas.

Image: Hampton Court Flower Festival. Credit: RHS

Professional organizers agree that while aiming to tackle one's entire bedroom in a single day is a gargantuan task, it isn't an impossible one.

When you live with an all-white or neutral kitchen, adding color can feel overwhelming. The wrong color can look stark or out of place, while too much color can seem accidental or sloppy.

Cleaning the house makes you wish for a magic machine that can do it for you. And turns out, you have one right in your laundry room—the washing machine, of course.

This year Chelsea Flower Show was full of interesting trees and shrubs with lots of dreamy woodland-edge planting in dappled light underneath leafy canopies. Native trees such as hawthorns, hazels and silver birch were the favoured choices in many of the show gardens, with a mixture of native and non-native ornamental plants selected for resilience and sustainability. In Ula Maria’s Forest Bathing Garden, white foxgloves, cow parsley and other umbellifers like Baltic parsley (Cenolophium denudatum) and valerian (Valeriana officinalis) were mixed with the simple shade-loving grass Melica altissima ‘Alba’ while Tom Stuart-Smith showcased intricate tapestries of interesting foliage in different shapes and textures. In other gardens, orange was a popular colour in many shades, from deep rusty orange irises to pale orange geums, especially in Ann Marie-Powell’s exuberant Octavia Hill Garden. As always, the Grand Pavilion is the ideal place to discover new and interesting plants showcased by some of the country’s leading nurseries.

Once the temperature rises, and that unwavering urge to spend even more time outside kicks in, the great outdoors becomes the best room of the house. (For a few glorious months, Mother Nature replaces our living room… dining room… and, yes, even our kitchen!) However, just like in your home’s interiors, an outdoor space hinges on selecting the right furniture. 

When it comes to dreaming up her perfect coop, Kate Richards—avid gardener, homegrown cocktail crafter, and wrangler of chickens—always starts with function before deciding on design details. First she figures out run size, roosting areas, number of nesting boxes, and where supply storage will live, and then she pieces together the perfect layout for the space. From there Kate adds details and decor elements that might seem over the top compared to the standard utilitarian set up. She’s known for using unexpected paint colors, patterned wallpaper, and gingerbread trim that make the entire space more aesthetically interesting while fitting in with her own home’s style and architecture.

Aesthetics and style trend have taken over our interiors, and we love that trends are spreading into our outdoor spaces, too. This year, as organic decor and biophilic design continue to dominate our home decor feeds, a similar gardening trend is growing—literally.