Good Pool Design

Owners of indoor pools decide to include this luxury in their homes for different reasons. Some are driven by the weather where others are driven by privacy. “Some clients want to swim year-round regardless of the weather, such as in places with harsh winters. It might be a client with issues of being exposed to sun such as people who’ve had skin cancer. Other clients do it for environmental issues such as blowing sand, and keeping debris out of the pool. And then there are people who want privacy,” Benedetti says.

The placement of the pool depends on the client’s desire. Most people picture an indoor pool as a large rectangle. This may be the case with a high percentage of indoor pools, but Skip Phillips, owner of Questar Pools and Spa in Escondido, Calif., emphasizes good design of his pools. “Generally people take as big a room as they can afford and put as big a pool as they can squeeze into it. This defies proportion and scale and that’s what makes YMCA pools duds. If you take the same pool, put it in the corner of the room and have it overflow its rim into a garden, then take the unusable space and shift it to the other side for lounge chairs, it would be much more interesting to me,” he says.

Another pool designed by Questar in Napa Valley, Calif., was placed half inside and half outside with glass doors that close over the middle. Phillips adds that the fundamentals of good pool design remain the same with this type of design.

The placement of an indoor pool depends on available real estate. Some designers choose to position the pool next to the house with a common wall in between, where others create separate buildings. When available property is an issue, indoor pools can be installed in basements. “Going down is logical because real estate is so expensive,” Benedetti says.

The location of the pool affects its style. If a common wall is shared or the pool is in the basement, the style of the house influences the pool space. If the pool is its own building, separate from the main house, this lends itself to creating its own style. “It depends if the homeowner is trying to create a theme [in this space] or match the home. We will work with the design and blend it so the pool enclosure doesn’t look like an afterthought or that it was added on to the house,” says Jeff Bova, architect, Omega Pool Structures, Towns River, N.J.