You love to host outdoor events, and your yard is an excellent place for it, but you need more space for seating, grilling, and lounging around. You’re trying to figure out how to extend your patio or build a new one, but you’re at a loss for Patio Extension Ideas. Try some of these to make a comfortable lounge for your yard!
1) Outdoor Kitchen Island
When you extend your patio, you want the add-on to be the most comfortable and fun space possible. This means finding the perfect outdoor furniture and can even mean designing a new outdoor room. What do we mean by an outdoor room? Think about adding an outdoor kitchen island like this one from The Home Depot to make it an outdoor kitchen or bar, or setting up a table to make it an outdoor dining room. You can always stick with the typical set of outdoor seats if all you need is a place to hang out.
2) Pergola
You’re adding onto your patio because you want to make yourself and your guests more comfortable by adding space. You’ll want to make people more comfortable in other ways, too, so try adding things like this pergola or even building a pergola to create a sheltered space. You can design it so that your old patio remains uncovered for enjoying the warmth of the sun, but add this pergola to the new section for taking breaks from the bright sunlight.
3) DIY Fire Pit
Extending a patio is a relatively simple task if you’re just imitating your existing one. If you used pavers, add more pavers. If it’s concrete, pour more concrete. If you want something more unique and fun, then you’ll want to build things like a fire pit. You can hire somebody to build a patio with a fire pit or use this video by This Old House to learn how to make one. Once you’ve installed a fire pit, you can build your brick, paver, concrete, or other surfaces around it.
4) Home Gym
If you like to workout or need to stay in shape, a gym is probably a valuable part of your life. That said, working out in a basement or another indoor home gym isn’t nearly as entertaining as having an outdoor workout, particularly if you’re the sort of person who likes the outdoors. You can use your patio extension as an outdoor gym with the advice in this article, though you’ll want to make sure you have a sturdy cover and outdoor storage for sensitive gym equipment.
5) Vegetable Garden
Are you a gardening enthusiast, or do you like to have homegrown vegetables? Fresh veggies from a home garden certainly taste better than old supermarket foods that have been sitting for weeks. This article from Savvy Gardening has advice on how to use your new patio extension to plant vegetables in containers and grow your own vegetables. Read the article to learn how to create the perfect garden for your patio and find out what considerations to make when building your extension.
6) Pea Gravel
When you add an extension to a patio, you have two options. You can try to make the new patio blend with the old one by using the same materials, or you can deliberately use a different material or color so that the new section looks like a second patio adjacent to the first. If you have a gravel patio already, it’s easy to make the two patios match by mixing the new gravel with the old or adding a layer of the new stuff over the old. Use this article to build your extension using pea gravel.
7) Retractable Pergola Canopy
Patios don’t necessarily have shade, but if you’re taking the time to design a new patio addition, you’ll want at least part of your patio to have the luxury of sitting out of the sun. Of course, you’ll want sunlight some of the time, so think about getting a pergola with an open top and putting a retractable canopy like this one from Amazon on it. This way, you get the versatility of having shade when you want it and sunlight when you don’t.
8) Location
Where will your patio be? Is your current patio up against the house, or are you thinking about putting it near a sunroom? Is it in the center of your yard? Your existing patio’s location will have a significant effect on your extension, but you’ll also want to consider what will be most convenient relative to the rest of your yard. Try putting your patio extension next to a set of windows or even a sunroom like the one in this picture to create a beautiful view of the patio, and make it feel like an extension of your home.
9) Butterfly Gazebo
It’s one thing to have a small patio without shade, but as it gets bigger, you’ll use it more often to do more things, and you’ll probably want to be able to use it when it’s raining or when the sun is too bright for you. Get a small gazebo, like this butterfly gazebo, to cover your new extension. It’s big, easy to set up, and waterproof. The unique butterfly design looks good and lets water drain effectively, so you won’t have to worry about your furniture being too wet to sit on.
10) Plan For Costs
How much are you willing to spend on your patio extension? Are you planning a massive patio with several areas for people to sit, garden, or have fun? Will it be a small extension to make your little patio a bit more comfortable? Think about your budget, and use this calculator to help you plan how big your addition can be, what materials you can afford, and more. The calculator is a fantastic resource because you can just plug your information in and get an estimate!
11) Connect Two Canopies
If you like to use canopies for shelter from rain and sun, you might be wondering how you’ll cover up both sections of your patio now that it’s increasing in size. While you can try to find an enormous canopy that will cover the whole thing, you can also use these rain gutters to piece the tops together. The gutters can be velcroed between the shelters so that rain doesn’t drip between them, effectively turning them all into one canopy.
12) Cedar
Cedar is well-known for its ability to ward off mosquitoes and other unpleasant bugs. Since you need new furniture to complete your addition, think about getting or building cedar furniture like this. These chairs are rustic to match a log cabin, mill, ranch, or another rustic exterior, and they’re designed with curved slat seats to make them comfortable. If you want an all-natural look and natural bug repellant instead of plastic chairs and smelly torches, these are the way to go.
13) Ground-Level Deck
If you want a ground-level space, but don’t like how pavers become uneven and need to be relaid every year or two, try building a ground-level deck like the one in this video. Unlike a typical patio, you won’t need to rebuild this for many years, and rainwater will run off it instead of pooling in any dips from uneven pavers. You can even build a small step to connect it to your existing patio and create a neat two-level area.
14) Pool
Your patio can be a seating area, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead, build a fun and unique place that will make your neighbors jealous. Consider extending your patio to create an outdoor pool area like the one in this picture. You can even screen it in so it can be heated in the winter but still have an outdoor view and natural sunlight. Either way, the pool will make an incredible addition to your patio and provide more entertainment than almost any other idea.
15) Basketball Court
If you’re looking for a fun way to improve your patio, don’t just take your ordinary patio and make it larger. Make your extension a unique place by building a basketball court as an addition to your patio. While this is a huge project, you can use this video by 302 CLAN to learn how to do it on your own and save money on labor costs or hire somebody so that you won’t have to do such a big project on your own.
16) Cover Everything
If you have an old concrete patio, you’ll want it to blend seamlessly into the old concrete. Unfortunately, there’ll probably be a seam between the two spaces since each section of concrete might have a slightly different color, or the old section might be damaged or not be level. Think about covering the old concrete with pavers using these instructions, or even making a concrete extension and covering both with pavers so that it looks like one large patio.
17) Make It Part of the Home
Your patio is becoming a more significant part of your yard and home. You’re extending it because you value the time you spend here and want more space to enjoy. Part of extending a patio from a sunroom, porch, or another patio is making sure that it feels like an extension of that space. Consider getting outdoor furniture to make it feel like a comfortable indoor room while still benefiting from fresh air and sun. Check out this article by Within the Grove for inspiration.
18) Paint
If you’re adding a concrete extension to your patio, you’ll probably find that the old and new materials look different. If one section is slightly coarser or a different color from the other, it won’t look very good. One way to make the addition and the old patio blend is to paint the entire patio using exterior concrete coatings like this one from Amazon. Think about getting a slip-resistant one like this to keep your patio safe and usable even during wet weather.
19) Extend Concrete Slab With Pavers
You might think that if you’re extending a concrete slab patio, you’ll have to use more concrete. This can be expensive, but what other choice do you have? Watch this video by Our House to see how they added pavers to a concrete patio’s edges to make it larger. Place the pavers around the edges so that they frame the rest of the patio attractively. This way, it looks like you deliberately created a decorative pattern from the two materials, and you won’t have to hire somebody to pour more concrete.
20) Rearrange Old Pavers
When you extend your patio, you’ll probably want it to match your old patio, but it can be hard to find new pavers that are identical to the old ones. If your old pavers are no longer available in stores, you don’t have to replace them completely or have two patios with different-colored and different-textured pavers. Remove all the pieces from the old patio and relay them while building the new one. This way, you can mix the old and new pavers together in a multicolored pattern like the one in this picture so that it seems deliberate.
21) Build a Roof
Some patios are simple concrete slabs or other uncovered surfaces. They’re exposed to the sun and the elements, and wear out faster while providing little-to-no shade. When you add a patio extension, think about how you can make it more comfortable by blocking the sun and weather. This article by Atlas Awnings is a great resource for building a patio roof, as it goes through considerations like how much the roof will cost and what you need for your particular space.
What kind of patio extension are you making? Did any of these ideas give you inspiration for your project? Tell us about it in the comments below.