Whether you own an apartment with a small balcony or you’re a house owner with a large patio, using the outdoor space of your property is a real wish. Before you are ready to migrate a portion of your daily activities outside, you first need to interconnect the outdoor to the indoor element in terms of design. This can prove too hard for some people because, well, we are not all interior designers, nor are we good with pairing up shapes and colors. It doesn’t mean that you’d give up on your wish to conjoin the exterior of your house with the exterior; it just means that you need a few tips on how to do it.
Pairing Up The Tiles
One of the essential steps you have to take is to even the design and the material the floor is made of. This might be tricky because one side of the floor will be exposed to the elements outside, while the other won’t. On the other hand, the interior side will be heated during winter, while the exterior surface of the same floor will have to endure subzero temperatures without cracking.
Since the hardwood floor and carpeting are out of the picture, ceramic tiles are the ideal flooring material. Not only are they durable, but they can be easily paired up in terms of the design. Because the exterior tiles are going to get dirty fast, you should go for a dark color, like black. This hue will cover up any muck that accumulates outsider,s, and on the other side (quite literally); dark tiles will be a beautiful interior design touch that will go well with other décor choices.
Walls Down
We presume that there is at least one door leading onto the patio or the balcony. However, you need to increase the amount of tempered glass and decrease the wall surface. Since you wish to join the two spaces into one, all walls need to be torn down. Now, this doesn’t mean that there will be no barrier between the exterior and interior in your house. You can install glass panels that will divide these two distinct zones.
If you are worried about safety, then be sure to choose good quality glass. When installed correctly, it should be as strong as the brick or concrete wall it had supplanted. Just make sure that the construction crew does a solid job caulking the edges because the last thing you need inside the house is draft.
What Type Of Door To Get?
Since you will be doing away with walls, you might be wondering what type of doors you will need to install. There are many types on the market, but the ones that best fit the bill are customizable bi-fold doors that have several advantages in terms of design. First of all, they provide you with quality because they are double-glazed and well-sealed, which makes them energy-efficient. This is quite important when you think of the energy bill at the end of the month.
Secondly, bi-fold doors can be shaped to fit into any frame, so you are dependent upon standard sizes as with other types of glass doors. Add the fact that these doors reduce noise pollution and that they are highly weather-resistant, and you get the perfect “portal” to shuttle between the balcony and the inside of your house.
A Matching Color Scheme
Like with the tiles, the general color scheme on both sides of the wall, or should we say glass, should match entirely. In reality, this means that if your garden set is white, the couch should also be white. If you have brown flower pots on the outside, there should be a brown detail inside the house as well, like a bookshelf or a similar piece of furniture. Also, try to make a balance between vintage elements usually found outside and the more modern fixture present on the inside of the home.
Play Of Light
So far, we have only discussed home improvements that are helpful during the day. However, during the night, you need to balance the light carefully. The most obvious option, to have a single dominant light source at the border of the indoors and the outdoors, is not the best option. Installation of such a light is tricky because it requires an extra opening in the glass wall, which weakens its structure.
A sounder solution is to place the interior light source closer to the outside wall and move the external light source away from the façade. This way, the two lights will not interfere with each other, but they will instead complement each other. If you own a large backyard, then garden lampposts in the far corners of your property should do the trick.
Successfully connecting indoor space with the adjacent outdoor one is all about subtlety. The transition should be smooth, so you never feel like you are stepping into a different part of the house. The glass wall and bi-fold windows help create this sensation.