Your backyard is meant to be a key source of enjoyment for you and your family. It’s meant to be your refuge. It’s meant to be your escape when you want to relax, unwind, chill, and even have some fun.
But your backyard can’t do all of these things for you if it’s a place you want to get away from versus get into.
Everyone deserves a place to leave the hustle and bustle of the long day behind.
But everyone’s perfect idea of relaxation is different. That’s where a hygge makeover can help.
Hygge, at its core, is a way to design a space that incorporates your preferences and all of your senses to create a peaceful atmosphere that suits you, and you alone.
Let’s learn how hygge can help you reach this level of a tranquil backyard.
What Is a Hygge Patio?
You might see hygge in stories online recently as part of indoor and outdoor design, and that’s because it’s been experiencing a surge in popularity.
Hygge, pronounced “HOO-guh,” is actually a Danish term that embodies “coziness and comfortable conviviality.” It’s a way of finding pleasure and warmth through simple, soothing things in your atmosphere.
What’s more, a hygge patio encourages interaction with family and friends – actual human connection that people crave today.
Steps to a Peaceful Backyard
First of all, what makes a peaceful environment to you might be something completely different to someone else.
Peace is subjective and unique to each individual and family. And this is why hygge can help you get the best tranquil backyard for you.
How Can Hygge Help You Create a Peaceful Backyard?
By embracing all of the simple comforts, hygge can use positive sensory elements to give you the most tranquil backyard.
To do this, the hygge concept determines the experiences that promote connection and relaxation through the experience-driven lifestyle. This means your landscape designer will work to identify what peace and relaxation mean to you and your unique family. He or she will design your space with an end experience or intention as the goal. This means the interview process up front will be more extensive to narrow down your ideal escape environment so those elements can be incorporated into your new peaceful backyard.
By determining how your family prefers to relax and connect, your landscape designer can use hygge principles to create intentionally designed and constructed spaces that foster those exact experiences.
Why does this work? Because an environment designed to curate customized human connection removes points of frustration and replaces them with the positive points that come from having a fulfilling Kansas City outdoor space.
What Elements of Hygge Help Create a Tranquil Backyard?
There are multiple steps one goes through to create a hygge patio, and they are quite different from creating a more traditional patio.
- Think about how you like to relax. Whether you enjoy reading, doing al fresco, entertaining, watching games, swimming, soaking in the hottub, playing with your pet, hanging out with your kids, performing yoga outdoors, or enjoying a fireplace, you dictate what entertainment types you want to include.
- Add relaxation features to your space. Once you determine your relaxation spaces, you add features that amplify stress-free experiences. These include water features, fire features, fragrant plants, natural elements like wood or stone, warm colors, and soft textures.
- Accessorize for comfort. Add elements to encourage coziness like comfy furniture, cushions, pillows, blankets, outdoor candles, tiny fountains, vases for fresh flowers, landscaping lighting, and outdoor speakers.
- Plan experiences in your hygge patio. Once your hygge space is in place, you enhance interaction by bringing people together, sharing good food and good times, such as dinner around the patio table, board games near the fireplace, or listening to music while enjoying the spa.
These same steps can be used to focus on a tranquil backyard. Ask yourself these questions to figure out what elements make the most sense for you:
- What sounds can help you be more tranquil or limit stressful sounds like traffic, such as water features, chimes, or speakers?
- What fragrances help you relax?
- What colors help you destress?
- What frustrations in your yard cause you tension, such as a lack of privacy, drainage issues, or noisy neighbors and how can we fix or mask those to provide more relaxation?
- What do you want to see in your backyard that would immediately create positive feelings?
What Are Examples of Peaceful Backyards Created Using Hygge Principles?
A hygge patio usually means building spaces to foster connection outdoors.
To amplify connection, you need gathering spaces. And you can have multiple types of spaces for different ways to interact. Maybe you’d like to gather around a fire pit for light and warmth. Or maybe you’d love a water feature to listen to the soothing sounds of trickling water. Warm, soft colors and cozy furnishings can help encourage that chill atmosphere, as can fragrant blooms and an outdoor sound system playing soothing music.
Having trouble figuring out how hygge can help you get that peaceful backyard you long for?
Here are some examples of hygge at work creating those more stress-relieving, tranquil spaces.
- Overworked, overstressed parents who need a place to decompress with their favorite book found enjoyment with a reading nook in their garden. To get their space, they used the hygge experience of coziness through comfortable lounge furniture, shade, and fragrant plants tucked into a private pocket to achieve a feeling of escape.
- A family addicted to their phone screens invested in a fire pit area with a new plan to meet around it every Wednesday night to roast s’mores and to each share three things going well in their lives. During this time, they leave their phones in a basket inside.
- A family who loves to entertain never had a chance to host outdoor parties because they didn’t have the space and were embarrassed of their old patio. They invested in an area designed with all of their favorite ways to entertain, including grilling, craft cocktails at a bar with fresh herbs nearby, a patio table for playing cards out of the wind and rain, and a fireplace to spend chilly fall evenings.
How to Create a Relaxing Hygge Patio
Maybe you like to host friends and family in your Kansas City landscape, and you’re seeking a space you can be proud to invite people to for summer get-togethers, some real world connection, and garden parties.
Maybe you’d like a cozy courtyard to welcome and visit with guests to your home, and you want an intimate space to deliver style and comfort.
Maybe you’re tired of your aging backyard, and you long for a private pool and a cozy space to enjoy the sun and play with your grandkids.
High Prairie Outdoors can get you a more tranquil backyard with our passionate team of experts who are experienced and trained in using hygge principles to maximize relaxation and peace.
We go through the elements of hygge detailed above after a thorough interview and continued check-ins to ensure you achieve the space that meets all of your stress-relieving needs.
Try Hygge to Get a More Peaceful Backyard?
We’re all surrounded by stressors in our lives. Late nights at work. Getting teens to take a phone break and get their homework done. The regular news feed. Family feuds. Not getting enough sleep.
Cheering ourselves up and motivating ourselves each day takes some work. A more peaceful backyard can certainly help take that stress down a notch and revive us, keeping us going on to each next day with a more positive, refreshed attitude.
And nothing can bring stress down like nature. It’s an antidote for stress, lowering blood pressure, easing your nervous system, enhancing your immune system function, boosting self-esteem, reducing anxiety, and even amplifying your mood.
Using hygge to build a place that brings you this instant ease and refreshing feeling right in your backyard can do wonders for your psyche, helping you destress and connect with your family and friends in more meaningful, solid ways. There’s no better way to increase your well-being and optimism.
If you’re interested in a hygge patio to make your Kansas City backyard more of a place you want to go to versus run away from, let High Prairie Outdoors help. We can share some backyard experiences with you that were transformed using hygge so you can see how these families have had their lives transformed and improved with experienced-driven, comfortable escapes.
A peaceful, more relaxing oasis can do wonders for your soul.
Ready to see how High Prairie can transform your Kansas City home landscape with the hygge landscape design concept? We’d love to share our design and installation expertise with you. Get started today with a free consultation. Together, we can prepare a design that you will love and your neighbors will envy.