5 Great Pool & Spa Design Ideas

As we head into the part of the year when the temperature starts to drop, a lot of people might be tempted to spend more time indoors, enjoying their backyard less and less.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. With a pool and spa combination in your own backyard, you can continue to pamper yourself and enjoy the outdoors just as much as you would in summer. 

With heated water and a hot, relaxing spa to indulge in, you don’t have to worry about being cold. Plus, it’s a great way to relax any tension in your muscles after a long day. That’s why this month at Morehead Pools, we’re giving you five amazing pool and spa design ideas to make your backyard somewhere you want to be no matter what the temperature.

Pool with integrated spa

You may not have realized this was an option, but a pool with an integrated spa is actually quite popular. By making the most of your space and creating a feature within the pool, you can have the best of both worlds, swimming directly into the spa to avoid transferring from doing your laps to doing your relaxing.

A submerged dam wall is used to separate the two bodies of water within the pool slightly, so if you like your pool cold and your spa hot, you’ve got that control. Often, an in-pool spa will be kept to one end or corner of the general pool design to help make this work.

Pool with attached spa

The next option is to have a spa attached to your pool, but separated by raised walls so that the water is never mixed between the two. You can either make a statement with your design by contrasting the coping and the shape of the spa – easier if you have a geometric pool – or create a more seamless flow by using the same materials and integrating the spa shape into the pool, which is easier if you have a freeform pool.

The benefit here is that you can close off your pool if you’re unlikely to use it in winter, but keep the spa going for a hot dip where you can relax or entertain.

Pool with raised perimeter-overflow spa

Sharing similarities with an integrated spa, this type of design simply raises the spa up and out of the pool water, with the perimeter of the spa flowing over the edge and back into the pool. This water will be collected in the channel around the edge of the spa and pool and then gets cycled back into the spa; however, you still get the sense of a seamless body of water with different levels and dimensions.

A raised perimeter-overflow offers the chance to create an eye-catching feature within your pool, while the overflow creates relaxing textures and sound to aid your relaxation time.

Pool with spillover spa

Spillover spa design is another way of allowing for a cascade of water to create relaxing features between the pool and spa. Rather than having the water overflow on all edges of the spa, a spillover will typically be limited to one edge or even just a portion within that edge. This creates a kind of waterfall effect, with a sheet of water constantly creating that audibly tranquil feeling.

As with the attached spa, you can either use a different shape and material to the main pool as a counterpoint or keep the two flowing both visually and literally.

Pool with detached spa

If you have the room within your open backyard design for a spa detached from your pool, then it makes it even easier to enjoy the spa in winter months. You can still swap between the two, but if you want to close your pool off for the season then you can do so while still having access to the spa. Materials, patterns, shapes, and more can be matched with the main pool, but it’s also far more acceptable to design them differently so they stand as their own features.

This design option is a great way to make more of the space without feeling cramped. It’s also more likely that you’ll use the spa for hosting guests in the evening if it stands completely apart from the main pool.

No matter which design option works better for you, when you need expert pool builders, at Morehead Pools we’re on your side. Helping you to plan and design your pool, custom spa, or any of the above combinations, we can bring all our decades of experience to the project and then we deliver stunning results through the construction.

Wherever you’re based in Shreveport and Bossier City, and no matter how cold it gets, you can make the most of your space with a smart and luxurious swimming pool and spa design from our professional team. It’s part of the reason we’re a member of the esteemed Master Pools Guild and why we’ve consistently been named in the Top 50 Builders by Pool & Spa News.

Call today to arrange a consultation and let’s start planning your dream design combination based on your pool and spa ideas.