Integrating Your Outdoor Grill Island With Your Pool

An outdoor kitchen can make a wonderful addition to your backyard oasis. You can grill food, entertain guests, and relax with your family. For your outdoor grill island to look its best, it should flow well with the aesthetic of your pool and your backyard. Our skilled designers can ensure that your grill, dining area, deck, and pool all look stunning and fit together perfectly.

Here are some things we consider when integrating your outdoor kitchen with your pool and yard:

1. Placement

Since your pool is likely going to be one of the largest elements in your yard, how it is placed will have a large impact on how other features can be laid out. Ideally, your pool should be reasonably close to your house. The outdoor kitchen can be placed on either end of the pool, behind it, or in front of it. Our 3D pool building software can help you visualize the final layout and adjust as needed.

2. Pool Shape

How your custom pool is shaped will also affect the flow of your backyard and will influence the layout of your outdoor kitchen. For example, a freeform pool will have curves that create more or less space in certain areas. Having the outdoor grill island near a concave space in the outline may be beneficial in these cases.

3. Integrating with Pool Features

Your pool’s features can interact with your outdoor kitchen and can affect options for placement. The most prominent example of this is if you have a swim-up bar. This feature should be placed so it’s easy to serve food and drinks from your grill island. Varying the levels so the kitchen area is sunken and the pool is more elevated makes it even easier.

If you have larger landscaping features (e.g. waterfalls or grottos) that might block your view, place the food prep area alongside them instead of behind.

4. Leave Room for the Deck

When building a custom pool, leave enough room for a deck to accommodate the number of people who will typically use your pool. If you frequently host parties, you should plan for most of the guests to be out of the pool at any given time, so the deck will need to be fairly large.

Make space for an outdoor dining area if you plan to serve large meals, although deck chairs are an acceptable alternative if you grill most of the time.

Aesthetic Connections Between the Kitchen and Pool

In addition to thinking about layout, it is important to ensure that your kitchen and your pool match aesthetically. You can achieve this by using similar colors in both areas. It’s also possible to use complementary tile designs to visually connect your pool with your BBQ grill island.

Build Your Dream Backyard

If you want to turn your yard into your own personal oasis, Pools by Design can help. We can create a stunning custom pool and can also build a full outdoor living area, including a kitchen.