Outdoor Living
The best room in the house has no ceiling.
In Georgia, outdoor living is most of the year. The terrace, the pool, and the garden deserve the same design attention as anything inside.
The brief
Terraces, gardens, and pool houses that stay comfortable long after sunset.
Serving
Atlanta, the metro suburbs, and North Georgia. Most often during new construction or a remodel.
Designed alongside
Lighting Control · Distributed Audio Video · Security & Surveillance
Most asked
Overview
Outdoor Living & Entertainment
A beautifully landscaped property tends to go dark and quiet at exactly the hour people most want to be outside in it.
We design the outdoors as a set of rooms. Landscape lighting gives the garden depth after sunset, trees uplit, paths washed low, the architecture grazed rather than floodlit. Distributed audio provides even coverage at a civilised volume. Weatherproof displays make the covered terrace genuinely usable for a Saturday afternoon match.
All of it is on the same control system as the house, so the terrace can be set for dinner from the kitchen while you are still cooking.
How it changes the day
What this actually feels like to live with.
A garden that continues after dark
Layered landscape lighting turns the view from the living room into something worth looking at all evening, rather than a black window.
Sound without a party next door
Distributed landscape speakers and buried subwoofers give even, full coverage at low volume, the opposite of two loud speakers at one end of the terrace.
Entertaining that starts with one press
'Terrace' brings up the path lights, the pool, the pergola, and the music, all at the levels you chose.
Shade and screening on demand
Motorized exterior screens drop to cut the afternoon sun, keep insects out, or enclose a covered terrace for privacy, which adds weeks to the season at both ends.
Built for the weather
Displays, speakers, and wiring rated for real outdoor conditions, humidity, pollen, temperature swings, and driving summer rain.
Design considerations
What we’re thinking about while you’re thinking about the house.
These are the decisions that determine whether the finished result feels deliberate or approximate, and most of them are made long before installation.
- 01
Coordinate early with the landscape architect
Fixture locations, conduit routes, and transformer positions need to be settled before planting and hardscape. Trenching a finished garden is nobody’s preference.
- 02
Light the composition, not the yard
Uplighting specimen trees, grazing stone, and washing paths at low level creates depth. A bright floodlight across the whole garden flattens everything and irritates the neighbors.
- 03
Screen glare and sun position
An outdoor display has to be specified for its actual orientation and shade. A standard television in a covered outdoor space fails quickly, and a full-sun location needs a very different product.
- 04
Water, pests, and corrosion
Outdoor infrastructure is a long-term durability problem. Sealed enclosures, correct burial depth, drip loops, and marine-grade hardware are what separate a five-year installation from a fifteen-year one.
What clients ask for
The brief, in their words.
- A garden that looks designed, not floodlit, after dark
- Even audio coverage at neighborly volume
- A usable screen on the covered terrace
- Pool, path, and terrace lighting on schedules and scenes
- Retractable screens for sun, insects, and privacy
- Equipment that survives Georgia summers
Questions
What people ask us.
Can you put a television outside?
Yes, using displays engineered for outdoor use. The right model depends entirely on the location: a shaded, covered terrace needs a different product from a full-sun poolside position, and a standard indoor television will fail in either. Orientation, shade, and viewing hours drive the specification.
How is outdoor audio different from indoor audio?
Outdoors there are no walls or ceilings to reinforce sound, so a pair of speakers has to be pushed uncomfortably loud to cover an area. The better approach distributes several smaller satellites around the space with buried subwoofers, producing even, full coverage at a much lower volume.
When should landscape lighting be planned?
During landscape design, alongside the planting plan. Conduit, fixture locations, and transformer positions are far easier to place before hardscape and planting go in, and the lighting design itself is better when it responds to the planting scheme.
Can outdoor systems be controlled with the rest of the house?
Yes. Outdoor lighting, audio, and video sit on the same control platform as the interior, so a single scene can set the terrace, and schedules can bring the garden up at dusk and take it down at bedtime automatically.
Designed alongside
Related solutions
Begin
Let’s talk about outdoor living.
Bring us your plans, your renovation, or just the thing that isn’t working. We’ll tell you what’s possible and what we’d do first.