Retaining Wall and Terraced Garden Design Ideas and Photos

How to turn a sloping block into usable garden rooms — wall types, drainage, step proportions, planting and the levels that make terraces work. A sloping block is not a problem, it is an opportunity most flat gardens never get: distinct outdoor rooms at different heights, long views across the garden, and a natural excuse for water to move. What ruins sloping gardens is treating the slope as a single continuous fall. Terracing it into two or three level platforms, each with a purpose, transforms an unusable hill into the most interesting garden on the street. Choose the wall type for the height and the look. Sleeper walls in hardwood or steel and timber suit low terraces up to around a metre and cost the least. Concrete block walls with a rendered or stone clad face handle greater heights and look permanent. Dry stone and gabion walls plant beautifully and drain themselves. Anything over about a metre, or supporting a driveway or structure, needs engineering and usually council approval — treat that as a given rather than a surprise. Drainage is the reason walls fail. Every retaining wall needs free draining gravel behind it, a subsoil drain at the base...

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Pool Designs

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling and Waterfall Wall, Stepping

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling, Travertine Coping and Frameless Glass Fencing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Olive. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling, Travertine Coping and Frameless Glass Fencing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Olive Trees and Silver Groundcovers, featuring a Waterfall Wall, Stepping Pads and Evening LED Glow

Plunge is part of our Pool Designs collection — one of 97 large-format widescreen concept visuals in this section. It is presented here at full size so you can study the layout, the planting, the surfaces and the way light falls across the design before you commit to building anything on your own block.

Infinity, lagoon, plunge and lap pools with surrounds, surfaces and pool-side living. Use this concept as a starting point: note the proportions between built form and greenery, where shade and shelter sit, how paths and paved areas move people through the space, and which materials repeat to hold the whole scheme together.

Every visual on this site is a design idea created for Home Design Photos. Browse the rest of the Pool Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling and Waterfall Wall, Stepping Lagoon-Style Swimming Pool Design with Charcoal Pebble Interior and Sun Lounge Terrace, Shaded Cabana →

More Pool Designs concepts

Lagoon-Style Swimming Pool Design with Charcoal Pebble Interior and Sun Lounge Terrace, Shaded Cabana

Lagoon-Style Swimming Pool Design with Charcoal Pebble Interior, Bluestone Coping and Blackbutt Decking, Cycads, Strappy Foliage and Uplit Feature Trees, featuring a Sun Lounge Terrace, Shaded Cabana and Outdoor Shower, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed Family

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging, Timber Deck Inserts and Sandy Beach Entry, Mass-Planted Agapanthus, Palms and Soft. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging and Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area

Compact Plunge Pool Design with Natural Boulder Edging, Timber Deck Inserts and Sandy Beach Entry, Mass-Planted Agapanthus, Palms and Soft Coastal Grasses, featuring a Pool-Side Pergola Dining Area and Firepit Lounge, with Considered Outdoor Zoning and Soft Layered Textures

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling and Waterfall Wall, Stepping

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling, Travertine Coping and Frameless Glass Fencing, Clipped Hedging, Feature Olive Trees and Silver Groundcovers, featuring a Waterfall Wall, Stepping Pads and Evening LED Glow

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds and Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds, White Rendered Walls and Bronze Fittings, Layered Ferns, Elephant Ears and Lush Poolside Greenery, featuring a Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill and Poolside BBQ Kitchen, complemented by Durable Weatherproof Finishes and Low-Maintenance

Resort-Style Swimming Pool Design with Pale Sandstone Surrounds and Swim-Up Bench, Spa Spill

Complete image catalogue

Smart Home Technology and Future House Design Ideas and Photos

The automation that genuinely improves daily life — lighting scenes, climate, shading, irrigation, security and solar, wired to last twenty years.

A genuinely smart house is not the one with the most devices, it is the one you never have to think about. The systems worth automating are the ones you would otherwise adjust several times a day: lighting, heating and cooling, external shading, irrigation, pool equipment, hot water and energy. Everything else is a gadget, and gadgets age badly while good infrastructure lasts decades.

Wire it properly and the rest becomes easy. Structured cabling to every screen and access point, a small ventilated comms cabinet, hardwired sensors and switches on the circuits that matter, and a spare conduit to the garden, garage and studio. Wireless is a convenience layer over a wired backbone, not a substitute for it. This costs very little during construction and is prohibitive afterwards, which is why it belongs in the earliest drawings.

Then automate around the sun rather than the clock. External blinds and louvres that close on the west in the afternoon do more for comfort than any air conditioner setting. Lighting scenes tied to sunset, irrigation tied to soil moisture and weather forecasts, pool filtration and hot water tied to solar production, and climate zones tied to occupancy. Each of these saves energy invisibly while making the house feel better to be in.

Future Homes design ideas photo from the Smart Home Technology and Future House Design Ideas and Photos feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Solar, batteries and monitoring close the loop. A well sized array, a battery if the tariff justifies it, an electric vehicle charger on a controlled circuit, and a single dashboard showing generation, consumption and export. The design lesson from every future home worth photographing is that the technology should be felt and not seen: no visible sensors on feature walls, no wall covered in switch plates, and one simple control everyone in the household can actually use.

House Design Photos is a HUGE Library Gallery and Directory of Home Design Photos

Retaining Wall and Terraced Garden Design Ideas and Photos

Family Lap Pool and Deck Design with Glass Mosaic Tiling and Waterfall Wall, Stepping

More Pool Designs concepts

Smart Home Technology and Future House Design Ideas and Photos