Blurring the line between home and garden has been a very popular design tactic for some time now. Everybody wants their outdoor spaces to feel comfortable and welcoming, and their interiors to feel spacious and breezy (desires that intensified during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020, when we were all stuck at home for weeks on end!).

One great way to achieve this is to create a smooth transition from your indoor to your outdoor living space. The barrier that separates your house from your garden is more flexible than you might realise, and by making that barrier as minimal as possible, you can give your indoor space an outdoorsy feel—and vice versa.

Here’s how to achieve this highly in-demand effect:

Choose a flooring material that’s suitable for indoor AND outdoor use.

To get the desired result, you’ll want to floor your interior using the same material you’ve got in your garden. Indoor / outdoor tiles are ideal for this sort of project; porcelain tiles in particular are very hard-wearing and can be used both inside and outside. As a bonus, your porcelain tile floor will require very little maintenance once it’s installed!
Choose a flooring material that’s suitable for indoor AND outdoor use
Make sure you use the same colour / design in both areas so that one floor looks like a continuation of the other.

Swap your back door for sliding glass.

Sliding glass doors are great because they keep out the elements without obscuring your view of the garden. On a warm day, the glass doors can be slid open to almost literally merge your living room with your patio—and because you’ve floored both spaces in the same style, it really will feel like one big space!

Glass doors come in lots of different configurations. If standard sliding doors aren’t your style, consider getting yourself a set of bifold doors, or even some fancy French windows; as long as you can throw them wide open, the smooth segue effect should work just as well.

Look after your outdoor space.

Once you’ve broken down the barrier between your indoor and outdoor spaces, it’s important to take equally good care of both areas. If you have a pristine living room that backs onto a neglected, sorry-looking garden, the matching tiles won’t be enough to make them feel like a single seamless space.

The good news is that, if you used porcelain tiles and paving to create your indoor-outdoor transition, those durable slabs will keep their good looks with very little effort on your part.
Look after your outdoor space.
An occasional clean should be sufficient to keep your porcelain patio in tip-top condition for years to come; the same goes for the tiles you’ve used to floor your indoor living space.

Modern flooring and paving materials make it surprisingly easy to achieve that sought-after seamless transition in the average family home, so if you want an airy atmosphere in your living room—or you’re tired of feeling like your garden is completely detached from the rest of your property—then this simple strategy may be exactly what you’re looking for.