Outdoor Living Spaces: 3 Steps To Creating The Ideal Porch For Entertaining

You may not have given much thought to your home's attached porch, but it is the perfect place for entertaining. Ultimately, your porch can serve as an integral piece of your home allowing for hours of conversation and quality time with friends, family and other guests. Here are three steps to make sure you plan the perfect porch that works well for entertaining:

1. First Comes Comfortable Seating.

Porches are often used for social gatherings or personal treats. Long conversations and comfortable lounging are necessary for the perfect backyard porch. However, it is more than that. The seating much be arranged carefully and strategically to help promote those long conversations. You need your porch to feel inviting and open. To avoid it feeling cramped, you need to know where to best place your furniture with the space that you have.

Narrow porches ultimately require furniture to be placed in a single row. With a bit more space, you could arrange clusters of small chairs and benches around a coffee table. A larger porch opens up the possibilities of patio furniture placement. When your porch is both wide and deep, your furniture can ultimately be placed anywhere – as close to the house as you want it or as far away as possible.

Next Comes Incredible Lighting.

Lighting can do wonders to any space, including your porch that likely lacks a lot of decoration. Depending on your personal style and preference, there are many ways in which you can incorporate lighting. Recessed lighting is a popular option that offers illumination without the exposure or glare from the light bulbs. Candles are also an excellent option, especially if you're trying to create a friendly or romantic environment. Another consideration is would be to use trees or exposed ceiling joists to hang strings of Christmas lights, mason jars with candles or something else that your imagination could come up with. Use your imagination with this one and you'll come up with so many options that it will be hard to choose which one to go with.

Last Comes Beautiful Accessories.

Once the seating and lighting have been taken care of, you can focus on adding your own personal touch to the porch with accent pieces and decorations. If you like eclectic styles but can't find a place for them in your home, your porch is the perfect place to incorporate these interesting pieces. You could also add decorative, bright-colored throw pillows to the patio furniture to spice things up a bit. At the end of the day, just make sure that the decorations match your family's personality.

When it comes to your porch, the possibilities are truly endless. In the end, it all comes down to how you arrange the space. Start with looking for luxury patio furniture and then move on to incorporate lighting and accessories to create your dream porch.

To learn more, contact a patio furniture company like Think Outside... The Outdoor Great Room Store.