Interior Courtyard Design - Designing Vertical Space
Posted: Sunday, December 03, 2006
by Steve Boulden
The Landscape Design Site
Creative interior courtyard design has some of it’s own special considerations and rules. Generally, you’ll follow the same rules as designing small gardens. The main difference and consideration will be in effectively using your vertical space - the walls.
Small gardens and especially courtyards can feel very boxed and closed in. How you choose to decorate the walls can have a dramatic influence in this. Merely hiding the walls with climbing vines as most folks generally do, doesn’t necessarily create depth or the sense of an extended boundary.
One way is in creating an alternate source of height besides the walls themselves. Adding another source of height, another element, will help draw the eye to the element so that not as much attention is payed to the final boundary. It creates an illusion of extended space beyond the element. It’s much like the 3d effect that painters create in paintings.
Placing a small tree, tall pot, or some other piece of decor in front of a vine covered wall creates a wonderful framework. In a sense, your decor element or planting becomes the focal point and the wall becomes its frame. This draws more attention to the element which has space behind it. And now the boundary doesn’t seem so final and hard.
Another consideration is in the colors of your walls. Bright and light colors make an area feel more closed in while darker colors create more depth and a sense of distance. Darker walls behind vegetation and vines can actually make the walls or final boundary seem nonexistent. It can give the sense that maybe the garden extends farther than you can see.
In courtyards you have very little to work with to start. So try looking at the boundary walls as an element that can be used as a framework and decorated instead of just the final destination.
Written by Steve Boulden. Steve is the creator of The Landscape Design Site.com which offers free professional landscaping advice to do it yourselfers and homeowners. For more landscaping ideas advice, visit his site at: www.the-landscape-design-site.com
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