Summer Decorating Ideas for an Apartment Patio: Tips and Tactics
Decorating your apartment patio for summer need not be a chore or dreaded task, and in fact, can be wonderfully satisfying and rewarding! What’s not to love about the cool evening breeze touching your face and arms as you relax on a comfy chaise lounge after a long day at the office? Why not bask on your patio in the morning’s earliest sunrays before work, with a cup of steaming coffee and the morning’s news on your mini-TV?
No matter where your apartment is located – city or rural, urban or suburban, north or south, east or west – and no matter how large or small your apartment patio is, there are a few general tips to remember before you begin applying design techniques to your patio-decorating project this summer:
1. Treat your apartment patio as you would any other room in your apartment. Keep it neat and organized. Store all those miscellaneous items somewhere else for the summer. If an item doesn’t fit into your theme or style, move it or store it.
2. Pick a single theme or style for your apartment patio: Romantic roses and plush, country casual and white wicker, art deco and neon … one theme at a time, please! Don’t try to be all things to all people in such a small space.
3. Make your apartment patio or balcony easy-care. Have a place for everything so everything’s in its place. Durable, recycled plastics and washable seats and cushions are a must. If you’re going with patio gardening, choose from the many self-watering containers that allow you to harvest tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, beans and other edibles all summer long.
4. Remember, sleeker spaces are easier to clean. Give yourself enough room to get around your apartment patio quickly with a broom, bucket and window washer.
5. Make your apartment patio furniture and accessories as weather-proof as possible. The last thing you want is to be carrying dripping wet patio furniture through your apartment in a sudden summer downpour!
Three Apartment Patio Decorating Styles/Themes
Whatever style you choose for summer decorating your apartment patio, make sure it’s a style you enjoy and can live with all summer long. Wedded to the idea of decorating your patio is the promise that you’ll have an extra space – outdoors – in which to relax, enjoy, play, read or entertain.
Country Casual
Weathered woods and wickers, folk art, cottage-garden flowers and antiques all say “country casual.” Try these ideas:
– post a stuffed, life-sized bantam rooster as a sentry in amongst your containerized herbs and flowers
– place a section of old white-washed picket fence in a sunny corner and let container-planted morning glories, nasturtiums, and clematis climb up the fence
– choose easy-care wicker or old-fashioned metal, painted with a bright rust-resisting paint. Keep a cozy reading table covered in a long, plastic tablecloth to protect against a sudden summer storm
– use as much old, found and weathered materials as you can find to secure planters, frame patio lights and serve as tables for outdoor electronics, game boards, televisions and sound systems
Historic Heritage
Pick an era you love, and live it large in the great outdoors on your apartment patio!
– choose a reproduction plaster bust of a famous statesman, orator or musician to reside on a tall bar stool
– place an old sundial in a corner, or cover the face with a sheet of clear glass and use it as an end table
– choose overstuffed furniture covered in water-repellant fabric. Choose your fabric designs with historic content in mind, whether it’s old Williamsburg or Victorian. Be consistent.
– lighting is easy in this mode: use a host of clean-burning vintage-styled oil lamps or a handful of streetlamp-style hanging lamps for the evening afterglow.
Enchanted Garden
Even on a mostly shaded apartment patio, you can achieve a secret garden style that assures privacy, fragrance and serenity all summer long.
– hang a dozen or more hanging plants from above, or put up a temporary fence-wall to allow vines and plants to climb upwards and fill in
– choose sleek, ergonomically sound patio furniture and bamboo floor-mats for Yoga exercises and meditation
– choose muted lighting techniques, such as solar-powered iridescent night-globes, or small twinkle lights trimming a patio railing and door wall
– enhance your patio garden with a musical, table-top or corner-pedestal water fountain.
Whatever your style …
Adapt tried-and-true small-space design techniques to suit your small-space apartment patio or balcony. Use height to draw eyes upward toward the more expansive sky. Use color – short darks in front, taller lights in rear – to give the perception of depth where little depth exists. You can double the outdoor view by placing outside mirror tiles on a sliding glass door or window. Add lights or string lights to banish the dark and open up the great outdoors.
Finally, understand that your apartment patio offers decorating opportunities as well as limitations. If your apartment is six or 12 stories up in the big city, you’ve got urban gardening issues – more pollution, stronger wind, deep shade and city heat, for instance – to deal with if you choose to decorate your patio with plants. But, if you succeed in choosing the right design and plants for your area, you’ve also got the opportunity to transform your apartment patio so dramatically that you’ll be the envy of your neighbors!
The most important decorating ideas for your apartment patio reside in your own imagination. If you enjoy your decor, chances are your visitors will, too.
