There is a particular feeling to a good resort. You arrive, your shoulders drop, and the day slows to the pace of the place. Much of that is the setting, but a surprising amount of it is design. The best hotels and beach clubs compose their outdoor spaces with real intention, and once you see how they do it, the same sense of ease is entirely possible at home.
Resort living is not about scale or expense. It is about a handful of principles that make a space feel generous, calm and effortless to be in. Here is how we think about bringing that feeling into a private garden or terrace.
What makes a resort feel like a resort
Strip it back and the resort feeling comes from a few consistent things. Space, first of all: pieces given room to breathe rather than crowded in. Generosity, in low and deep seating you sink into rather than perch on. Cohesion, in a restrained palette that runs right through the space. And calm, the sense that nothing is trying too hard. None of these depend on a big budget or a big garden. They are decisions, and they are yours to make.
It helps to think the way a hotel does. Resorts design their terraces and poolsides as complete environments, considered as carefully as any interior, and built to be lived in hard and still look composed. That is the same thinking behind our own work with hotels and hospitality venues, and it translates directly to a home.
Generous, low, inviting seating
The single most resort like decision you can make is to choose seating that is low, deep and generous. Hotels furnish their lounges with pieces you settle into for hours, wide of arm and soft underhand, because comfort is the whole point. A deep sofa, a pair of matching lounge chairs and a low table will do more for the mood of a space than any amount of decoration. Our lounge collections, and the daybeds and loungers in our relax range, are built in exactly this spirit.
Give the seating room. Part of what makes a resort feel expensive is the space around each piece, the sense that nothing is squeezed. Even in a smaller garden, a little restraint, fewer pieces with more air between them, reads as far more luxurious than filling every corner.
One material language
Resorts almost never mix and match at random. They commit to a palette and let it run right through, and that consistency is a large part of why the space feels resolved. Choosing one material language, whether the warmth of teak, the clean line of architectural aluminium or the soft texture of an all weather weave, and carrying it from the loungers to the sofa to the dining setting, gives a home that same sense of cohesion. Our guide to the materials is a good place to find the one that suits your space.
Keep the colours quiet. Resort palettes lean on natural tones, stone, sand, warm wood and soft linen, so the setting itself, the light, the planting, the water, becomes the colour. A calm base like this is also endlessly easy to live with and to refresh over the years.
Zones for the whole day
A resort never asks you to do everything in one spot. There is somewhere to lie in the sun, somewhere shaded to retreat to, and somewhere to eat as the evening comes. Recreating that at home is simply a matter of gently zoning the space: a lounging area, a shaded corner, and a dining setting for the evening, each given its own place. The same thinking runs through our notes on designing a Mediterranean terrace.
The trick that ties it together is drawing every zone from the same family of pieces. When the loungers, the sofa and the dining chairs all speak the same design language, moving from one to the next feels seamless, and the whole garden reads as one considered space rather than several unrelated ones.
The small luxuries
The finishing touches are what tip a space from nicely furnished into genuinely resort like, and they cost very little. Shade, in a generous parasol or a simple pergola, so there is always somewhere cool to sit. Greenery, in olive trees, potted herbs and a little structure, to soften the architecture. And in the evening, warm low light from lanterns and candles rather than anything bright.
Then the quiet details: washed linen, simple ceramics, a tray for drinks, a stack of books left out. The point is restraint. A few well chosen things, arranged with care, feel far more considered than a space crowded with them, and they leave room for the setting and the people to take the lead.
Built to be lived in
There is one last thing resorts understand that is worth borrowing. Their furniture has to survive constant use and constant weather and still look beautiful, so it is made properly, in materials chosen to last. Ours is built to the same standard and made to order, which means the resort feeling you create is not for a single season. It is a space that keeps its composure through years of real life, sun, rain and everything in between.
That is the true luxury of bringing resort living home. Not a look to be staged for a weekend, but a calm, generous, enduring place to slow down in, exactly as you would on holiday, only this time without ever leaving.