Your Custom Swimming Pool Design - Dreamtime Waters

The variety of options when it comes to designing a custom swimming pool to suit your home is endless. From standard corridor and l-shaped lap pools to infinity pools, multi-tiered pools or even pools carved in the outline of your favorite cartoon character - your only limitation is your imagination.

Still, money, as with most things, will be a constraint on exactly how glamorously you can hope to meet your own expectations. Can you afford to install an inground custom swimming pool? Do you want to go for simple concrete or for a pricier pre-shaped metal or fiberglass construct? If you stand to get yourself in debt over a luxury renovation like this, you're probably better off waiting until your can comfortably manage the expense of your dream inground pool design - go for a collapsible, above ground pool in the meantime.

But if the bug's really in you, you'll be happy to know that there's little you can do to top the jaw-dropping effect of a colour-lit inground design replete with fountains and other water features, and such things won't just give you bragging rights, they could be a serious investment in the long-term value of your home. A custom swimming pool adds character and interest to your recreational area, but be careful when designing the area that surrounds the pool - this is social space that will be the locus of pool parties and late-night, starlit romantic chats. Think about how people will want to arrange themselves in such a setting, and work accordingly to provide places for them to laze, sit and play backgammon. Remember also that the capacity of your pool, if you want to hold large pool parties or other such events, should be sufficient for seven people to move around without impeding each other - as seven in the number of people that, studies show, will be in the pool at any given time during a pool party.

But regardless of social considerations, the questions you need to ask yourself are really about your own dreams, of the kind of life you'd like to live. What kind of environment would you be most comfortable relaxing in? Do you prefer the feeling of patio or varnished wooden deck under you feet? Do you like the look of natural stone, or clean, postmodern design features like glass rim-flow elements? Do you want a window looking from your wine cellar into the pool, or does the idea of someone watching your clumsy underwater antics turn you off? What landscaping ideas for privacy are to your taste - do you want to be surrounded by trees, flowers, or white picket fencing?

Finding your own answers to questions like this will decide whether your custom swimming pool turns out to be an element of your dream home. Considering aesthetic elements of inground pool design alongside landscaping ideas for privacy and beauty will ensure that your recreational area will suit your taste, not that of your developer or the photographers for the latest issue of Garden&Home.

To read more about designing your own Extraordinary Swimming Pool click onto www.BestSwimmingPoolShop.com.

- Ryan McCall