A well-designed backyard pulls you outside without asking. Coffee in the morning, dinner with friends in the evening, kids running between the grass and the pool while you catch up with a neighbor under the string lights. It doesn’t just sit there; it gets used.
For a lot of DFW homeowners, though, the backyard is the most under-used square footage they own. It’s where we store the grill, park the dog, and swear we’ll “do something about it one day.” Spring and fall in North Texas are made for sitting outside, and with the right shade, a good part of summer can be too. That’s a lot of space to leave half-finished.
6th Ave Homes designs and builds outdoor living in Fort Worth: covered patios and pergolas, outdoor kitchens, fire features and large hardscape, with pools built to the same plan by the independent pool contractors we partner with. A good backyard isn’t about spending the most money. It comes from a handful of decisions made in the right order, and most of them cost nothing to think through.
Whether you’re planning a full outdoor build or just want to know where to start, here are the eight, in order, with a word at the end on who should plan them.
Start With How You’ll Actually Live in the Space
Before you touch a single paver or price out a pool, stop and answer the most important question: how do you actually want to use this space?
This sounds obvious, and it’s the easiest step to skip. Skipping it is where the regrets come from. People end up with a beautiful pool no one uses because there’s nowhere to lounge nearby. Or a gorgeous patio that’s unusable by 2 p.m. because they forgot about shade. Or an outdoor kitchen facing the neighbor’s garage instead of the view.
Spend a weekend observing your backyard like an outsider. Where does the sun hit in the morning? Where does it bake in the afternoon? Where do you naturally gather when friends come over? Where do the kids want to be? What part of the yard do you avoid?
Then write down three to five things you want this space to do — not how it should look, but how it should function. Maybe it’s: “host Friday-night dinners for ten,” “give me somewhere quiet to work from a laptop in the mornings,” “give the kids somewhere to burn energy.” Every design decision after that gets measured against those goals.
When you lead with function, beauty follows naturally. When you lead with Pinterest, you usually end up with a backyard that photographs well and lives poorly.
Design the Flow Between Inside and Outside
The best outdoor spaces don’t feel like a destination you have to commit to walking to — they feel like a natural extension of the house. Getting that flow right usually takes a few architectural moves, not a new house.
Think about widening your back door to a set of glass sliders or folding doors. A wider opening needs a new header above it, which is structural work. Replacing a window with a pass-through bar. Bringing the patio up close to your floor level, with enough slope and drainage to keep water out of the house, so stepping outside isn’t a step down. Matching the flooring from inside to outside, or contrasting it on purpose, so the eye reads it as one continuous space.
Interior materials can also translate outside. Outdoor rugs that echo the living room rug. A light fixture above the outdoor dining table that nods to the one above your kitchen island. Cushions in the same palette as your indoor pillows. These touches trick the brain into reading your backyard as another room of the house rather than a separate zone.
When your outdoor space feels like the next room over instead of outside, you use it without deciding to. And with those doors open, the house reads bigger.
Rethink What a Pool Can Be
If a pool is in your plans, let go of the generic idea you might have inherited from the ’90s — the big kidney-shaped thing surrounded by concrete decking. A pool can be designed less like a standalone feature and more like part of the landscape around it.
A smaller, rectangular “plunge” pool can cost less to build and less to keep up than a bigger one — while still giving you somewhere to cool off every July. A tanning ledge (a shallow, wide shelf at one end) turns the pool into a place to lounge with a drink, not just swim laps. A dark interior finish makes the water read like a reflecting pond and can suit a modern house. A spillway into a spa gives you a sculptural water feature and a warm place to sit in November.
And the hardscape around the pool matters as much as the pool itself. Thoughtful decking, soft landscaping edges, and well-placed planters can turn a pool zone from “backyard water feature” into the visual centerpiece of your home.
The right pool is one that matches the scale of your lot, the style of your home and, again, how you’ll actually use it. Not the biggest one your budget allows. Design the pool and the space around it together, as one plan. That’s how we work: we design the pool, the decking and everything around it, and an independent pool contractor we partner with builds the pool to that plan. For a sense of scale, our published range for pool and outdoor living work is $35,000 to $400,000, and a pool by itself runs about $75,000 to $300,000 before anything is built around it.
Build an Outdoor Living Room
The pool gets the attention. The zone you’ll sit in most days is the outdoor living room — the shaded, soft, comfortable area where you sit down and stay a while.
Real outdoor living rooms have the same DNA as indoor ones. A rug grounds the space. A sofa and a pair of lounge chairs define a seating arrangement. A coffee table anchors the middle. A side table holds your drink. Throw pillows add color and softness. The materials are weatherproof, but the feeling is living room, not patio furniture.
If you have a covered structure, a ceiling fan or two rated for outdoor use is non-negotiable in Texas. A TV or speakers can turn it into a second den. A fireplace or fire pit gives you a reason to linger after the sun drops. Even small touches signal that this is a real room, meant for real use: candles, a basket of throws for cool nights, a stack of outdoor books.
Build an outdoor living room that invites people to stay for three hours, not three minutes, and watch how often you find yourself drifting out there with a coffee or a glass of wine. That’s the whole point.
Add a Real Cooking Zone (Not Just a Grill)
A grill sitting alone on the patio is fine. A dedicated outdoor cooking zone is a different thing entirely.
You don’t need a full built-in kitchen with stone countertops and a pizza oven — though if that fits the project, go for it. What you need is a thoughtful layout that lets the person cooking stay in the conversation instead of running back and forth to the kitchen for tongs, drinks, ice, or plates.
