Decorate Your Outdoor Rooms: Hot Tubs
Jay Johnson Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 10:44AM 
A hot tub on top of your pool: Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich designed the Sci Fi Hot Tub within its own inflatable iceberg
If I could bottle the warm, sunny weather we had over Memorial Day, I would - it was flawless! It got me thinking about how our interior design students and homeowners everywhere should be adding outdoor rooms to your list of must-decorate spaces. The trend in recent years has to bring the outdoors indoors and to also bring the indoors outside with livable extensions of the home. Good home decorating enhances the function of a room, and so too should you consider the function of an outdoor space.
More traditional hot tub, but well designed: Bullfrog Spa 151R SportX
I'll be exploring outdoor room decorating in upcoming posts, but I thought I'd start with hot tubs. Having just come back from a trip to Amsterdam, I made a special side trip to see the Weltevree showroom and check out the Dutchtub, a sensational lightweight, portable hot tub that uses a wood fire to heat your water in what amounts to sitting in a giant colorful teacup!
Wood-burning, portable, back-to-nature alternative: Weltevree's Dutchtub
Privacy helps with hot tub placement: Weltevree's Dutchtub Loveseat
If you're going to add a hot tub to an outdoor room, make sure it's convenient to other amenities for bathing and pool use. Is there a cabana or changing room handy? (A converted part of your garage might make a good cabana.)
A lightweight, inflatable solution: Oval AiriSpa portable hot tub
Do you want the hot tub to be on a deck, handy to in-and-out traffic from a family room? (Make sure you don't have a wood-burning Dutchtub on a wood deck - for obvious reasons!) Wherever you position the hot tub, make sure the outdoor room has lots of privacy, with plantings, hardscape, and fencing designed to shield bathers from prying eyes. Finally, plan for safe evening lighting to make the passages between hot tub and home accessible; there's nothing worse than groping in the dark or tripping and falling down after spending a relaxing time in a hot tub.
Evening relaxation with built-in lighting: HotSpring Limelight collection hot tubs
Click on any hot tub photo for more product information, and add a hot tub to an outdoor room for summer entertaining, after-work stress relief, small intimate parties, or close encounters of the romantic kind.
If you're interested in learning more about interior design, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.