While a combination of external blinds and a retractable roof will create a wonderful outdoor room, there is so much more you can do to make that space even more spectacular. For example, there is a trend towards furnishing outdoor rooms with comfortable and stylish lounge furniture, as well as floor coverings that you’d normally find in interior rooms.
Other examples include setting up spectacular outdoor kitchens, complete with the kitchen sink, as highly functional and eye-catching features. Large gas and wood fires are also the centrepiece of many outdoor rooms in Australia, as are weather-resistant televisions.
For those of you wanting a more down-to-earth feel in your outdoor room, you might want to consider a vertical garden. This will give you a living feature wall in your room, and provide the striking and distinctive touch you’re looking for. We think vertical panels of our black, rectangular louvre panels as the background for fresh, green plants looks amazing.
Excuse the pun, but vertical gardens are growing in popularity in Australia. We understand why. They bring many benefits to a living space apart from the fact that they look so good. For example, a vertical garden can purify the air by turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. It’s been calculated that just one square metre of a living wall can extract 2.3 kilograms of CO2 from the air every year and produce 1.7 kilograms of oxygen.
While vertical gardens make the air fresher and cleaner, their advantages don’t stop there. They’ve been proven to increase the feeling of well being and this is probably a direct connection to their ability to clean the air. Cleaner air leads to fewer health issues like respiratory conditions and allergies, and in workspaces where vertical gardens have been installed as an aesthetic feature, it’s been noticed that there is a marked decrease in staff absence due to illness.
A vertical garden can also act as a natural sound barrier in your outdoor room. It is capable of absorbing about 40% more sound than a traditional facade and this can mean a noise reduction of up to eight decibels. This creates a quieter environment both inside and outside, making things much more comfortable for the people in your room, as well as your neighbours.
Finally, with more people working from home in the COVID era, outdoor rooms are becoming very popular office spaces. So how can a vertical garden fit into your working day? Research indicates that blood pressure, heart activity, muscle tension, and brain activity can be improved by viewing plants for just a few minutes at a time. The positive moods directly linked to this sense of wellbeing can boost learning and lead to better decision-making while carrying out complex tasks. Yet another study says a green workplace can boost productivity by 15% so adding a vertical garden to your outdoor room/at-home office can have a significant effect on the work you do at home.
A vertical garden is yet another way you can make an outdoor room even better. Enhance your area with the addition of vertical rectangular sun louvres and you will have a very appealing outdoor area to enjoy with functionality. There are a lot of companies in Australia now specialising in vertical gardens, so get in touch to find out more. As for an outdoor room itself - get in touch with us!