At some point during the second week of summer, the thought of renovating a backyard pool completely ceases to be exciting and instead seems overwhelming. Traditional pool ownership has always carried a certain weight, but an increasing number of homeowners seem to be deciding it’s no longer quite worth it due to the excavation crews, concrete trucks, months of construction the bill that keeps going up.
Instead, they’re aiming for the cocktail pool. Cocktail pools are subtly changing people’s perceptions of outdoor living because they are small, fashionable better suited for sitting in shallow water with friends and a refreshing drink than for swimming laps. They are usually 10 to 20 feet long and 8 to 12 feet wide they are rarely deeper than five feet. They are not designed for racing. They are designed to linger.
According to Mike Fox, vise president of fiberglass product at Latham Pools, compact pools are now among the models in the company’s entire lineup that are expanding the fastest. It’s easy to understand why backyards with expansive rectangular pools anchored by diving boards aren’t always the ones drawing attention.
When you stroll through a neighborhood of more recent construction or browse any home improvement feed. These are the ones with built-in benches that keep everyone in the water instead of awkwardly standing around the edge a smaller, sculpted pool that is flush against a patio and well-lit.
It seems like homeowners are being more truthful with themselves about how they truly utilize outdoor space. The fantasy of kids playing cannonballs all afternoon and the big swimming pool racing lengths before breakfast quickly comes true. The majority of adults don’t train.
They are interacting with each other. In certain respects, a cocktail pool is a more authentic form of infrastructure. It acknowledges what people truly desire on a hot summer’s evening.
Although it’s rarely the first thing people bring up, maintenance is also part of the appeal. Simply put, a smaller pool requires less energy, less chemicals to balance less water to treat.
The smaller footprint means there’s still space for a dining table, a fire pit, or a patch of grass that doesn’t feel like an afterthought for homeowners in urban or suburban areas where every square foot of yard has some value. Even if people don’t mention it first when explaining why they selected one, it’s possible that lower ongoing costs are driving the trend just as much as esthetics.
Cocktail pools no longer appear to be a compromise, which has changed in recent years. Businesses such as Soake Pools in New Hampshire have begun to offer designs with vibrant, opinionated checkerboard mosaic patterns that turn the pool into a statement rather than a practical feature.
What could have been a useful dipping area has been transformed into something more akin to a design object with the addition of tanning ledges, LED lighting strips spa jets. As this happens, it’s difficult not to consider how outdoor living has developed as a category in the same way that outdoor kitchens went from novelty to expectation.
All of this does not imply that the conventional pool will disappear. Homeowners with large properties, serious swimsuits large families will still make the appropriate decisions. The cocktail pool isn’t the answer to every issue; it can’t hold a fifteen-person pool party without becoming extremely crowded.
The cocktail pool presents a strong argument for a homeowner looking at a small urban backyard and trying to figure out how to make it feel like a destination rather than just a yard. It is based on what most people’s summertime actually entails: a few friends, some shade refreshing water that is meant to be enjoyed rather than conquered.