10/14/2022
EVALUATE THE SPACES AND MEASURES
Evaluating the available perimeter is certainly one of the preliminary steps, before furnishing a terrace and actually deciding what to insert and what materials to use. Clearly, in a confined space, it will not be possible to opt for too large and bulky furnishing accessories, but we will have to think of functional accessories, perhaps expandable, which allow us to create a pleasant and welcoming terrace, despite its small size. On the contrary, a large terrace leaves much more space in its furnishings, allowing us to create a corner of paradise!

ASSESS THE CLIMATE OF YOUR CITY
Another fundamental point, before furnishing a terrace, is to evaluate the climate of the city in which we live, in order to identify the functional areas, looking for optimal solutions that take into account the changes of the season and, consequently, decide how to use our space. outdoor, for example to sunbathe, to work in the open air, to devote yourself to plant cultivation, to have lunch, and so on ...
CHOOSE THE STYLE
As for the style, the terrace can be considered to all intents and purposes an extension of our home and, therefore, it is highly recommended to opt for furnishings in continuity with the style of the interior. Palette of colors and materials in common, can help us to maintain a sense of harmonious homogeneity between inside and outside.

FURNISH AN UNCOVERED TERRACE
Surely, for an open terrace, it is essential to consider choosing an outdoor umbrella, so as to be able to shelter from the summer sun or from possible weak drizzles. If the intention is to furnish an open terrace, it is better to consider neutral colors, always as consistent as possible with the interior of our home. Of course, it obviously depends on the style we decide to adopt: to recreate an exotic environment, for example, the advice is to choose warm but basically neutral colors, such as straw yellow, beige and brown.

FURNISH A COVERED TERRACE
If the space available is of considerable size, we could think of introducing a covering in natural wood panels, therefore a pergola or a gazebo with a sliding roof, capable of hosting a real living or dining area, usable on dull days. On the other hand, if it is a completely structurally covered terrace, we will have the possibility of avoiding this option, since this outdoor area will turn out to be a real extension of the house.

FLOORS
If you want to change the coverings of our terrace, it would always be a good idea to choose materials that withstand the elements over time. We could opt for special wooden coatings, which can also be applied over the existing flooring, without the need for too demanding interventions.

HOW TO LIGHT THE TERRACE
A fundamental element that we will have to worry about is lighting: the light sources must be designed and organized according to the different needs, without being, however, too invasive and strong. A valid alternative could be to combine targeted lighting, to enhance the most beautiful parts of the terrace, with soft lighting, perhaps opting for solar-powered lights, which do not show wires and are recharged with sunlight. For the more romantic, in addition, the classic lanterns and candles are certainly an ace in the hole.

FURNISH THE TERRACE WITH CURTAINS
Building an intimate corner, covered with curtains or sheer fabrics, can be a wonderful alternative to traditional sun covers: we could choose resistant fabrics, suitable for outdoors, which will give our terrace that truly distinctive touch of class.
FURNISH THE TERRACE WITH PLANTS
In a terrace, certainly, a green corner cannot be missing: plants are a basic element for the good decoration of your terrace, this is because they give the spaces that note of color and freshness that fully characterizes them. The styles to introduce them are many, from the Mediterranean with terracotta pots containing colorful flowers and aromatic plants, to a more Zen style with white pebbles in perfect harmony with the various shades of green of the plants.

Interior Designer since 1985
CEO & Founder, Italian Design in the World
In the city, those few square metres beyond the door are often the only truce between the flat and the noise outside. They are not a decorative extra: they are a border — different light, different wind, different rules. Yet too many balconies stay storage for crates, folding chairs and rushed tiles, as if design stopped at the glass.
The prejudice comes from years of institutional rooms where function crushed aesthetics. In residential work, things have changed: handles that are objects, walk-in showers that are elegance before aid, wide doors and near-invisible thresholds that are build quality before regulation. The gap is not budget: it is awareness that dignity lives in daily details — the ones you touch hundreds of times a year.
Open a catalogue of contemporary homes and you often find cover-worthy kitchens, theatrical bathrooms, living rooms that look like photo sets. Between one image and the next, a narrow corridor appears, lit by a sad single point — or a vestibule reduced to a knot between doors. That is not a technical detail: it is silent design about what life spends most of its time doing — passing through, pausing, shifting register, leaving one room before entering another.
Open plan has dominated the image of the contemporary home: few walls, few boundaries, maximum flexibility. The promise was freedom — kitchen in dialogue with the living room, light flowing, no "closed" rooms. Over time many have discovered the downside: noise travelling, no refuge, difficulty concentrating or switching off. The response isn't to go back to the closed-off house of the past, but to rethink the value of dedicated spaces: environments with a clear function that the body and mind learn to recognise.
Interior design has long favoured sight: colours, shapes, surfaces. Only recently have we started to talk about touch and smell. Hearing, by contrast, remains the most neglected sense at the design stage — yet it's the one we can't switch off. We live in homes that boom, reverberate, carry voices and noise from one room to another. The result is stress, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and resting.
For decades interior design has chased the idea of a "perfect", unchanging space: same colours, same lights, same layout twelve months a year. The home as a photo set always ready, but often distant from the cycles that govern our body and our mood.Today a different idea is returning: the house as an organism that responds to the seasons. Not an aesthetic whim, but a response to the need to align the environments we live in with natural rhythms — light, temperature, colour, vegetation — with measurable benefits for sleep, concentration and wellbeing.March, with the equinox and the awakening of spring, is the ideal time to rethink interiors in a seasonal key.