Over the last year, we continued to see trends in outdoor living spaces. Below we note the top 5 porch trends we’ve seen in 2013.
- Outdoor fireplaces
- Low maintenance
- Accessories
- Outdoor TV
- Separate outdoor cooking or grilling area
Outdoor fireplaces (gas or wood)
This has been the year of the outdoor fireplace. We’ve built several outdoor fireplaces for our clients here in the Kansas City market. Homeowners now view their porch as an outdoor living room. They want the whole experience where they can enjoy the ambiance of indoors in an outdoor living space such as a screened porch or open porch. In addition to elevating the ambiance of a porch, the outdoor fireplace serves an additional benefit of moderating the temperature allowing homeowners to spend more months during the year on their porch.
Low maintenance
Many of our clients want to use some low maintenance materials on their new outdoor structures. What does this mean? It generally means that those components are easier to clean and last longer than other materials. As it relates to porches, our customers are looking for low maintenance, permanent flooring. They want low upkeep in all kinds of weather.
Accessories
As noted above, homeowners are not only moving outside by building outdoor living spaces but they also want to do more living in those spaces and want some of the creature comforts they have indoors. On their porches, homeowners are asking for things like custom lighting and wiring for various amenities such as outdoor sound systems. They are also looking for more outlets in different 
places to plug in the types of amenities that are often used inside such as lamps, laptops, deck lamps, etc.
Outdoor TV
Homeowners want outdoor televisions. They want to watch the game, pop in a good movie, or turn on educational shows for the kids. And, homeowners are mounting their TV’s on the wall to get the most out of the living space.
Separate outdoor cooking or grilling area
The deck to the left of this screened porch is small but just the right size for a grill and some space to enjoy grilling.
Homeowners are now looking to have their outdoor cooking area off their porch. They want it close but not in the porch where it would interfere with other things going on. Grill decks have become popular. These are small decks attached to an exterior porch door designed to hold the grill and grilling apparatus.
Reading the above, you can tell that today’s porches are a good bit different than they were even a few years ago. Today’s outdoor rooms area designed to enjoy the outdoors while not giving up on the great creature comforts of indoors.
Bonnie and Dan Hall, Archadeck of Kansas City Owners
If you are considering adding a low-maintenance roof structure to your backyard, give us a call for a free consultation. We will walk you through all the various materials and considerations to help craft the best custom porch for how you want to live outdoors.
Give us a call: (913) 851 – 3325
Drop us an email: kansascity@archadeck.net
Visit our website at kansas-city.archadeck.com