Fall Pergola Preparations

Your backyard pergola can feel like it’s designed for the heat and growth normally associated with spring and summer. Even as the days start to shorten in fall, you’ll still be able to use your pergola during the midday sun. However, the mornings and evenings can get chilly in Calgary, so here are some seasonal adjustments to keep the pergola party going until the snow starts to fly.

Get Cozy

Fall is the best time of year to spend outside on your pergola in the afternoons and evenings as you’ll get the residual warmth reflected from the wood or stone flooring, and you can add some simple soft furnishings to make things cosy. You’ll be amazed at how far a fleece lined blanket and a few throw pillows can go to get people to snuggle up, and you can add to this with a soft outdoor rug to create the ultimate indoor outdoor cosy set up. Add the finishing touch of a hot drinks bar complete with a kettle, packets of tea, hot cocoa and whipped cream and maybe some fall themed snacks (pumpkin spiced cookies, anyone?!) and you’re ready for a cosy evening under your pergola. 

Light It Up

One of the key features of fall in Calgary is the shortening days. While this does make for some fantastic sunsets across the city, it can also feel like it’s cutting into your play time outside. However, your pergola feels almost purpose built for string lights or even lanterns hanging from the overhead lattice. Whether you choose candlelight or electric power, make sure you strike the right balance between lighting that is soft enough to create that fall vibe and that is also bright enough so that you can see each other. 

Add Some Heat

One reason that Calgary residents don’t use their pergola after the end of summer is that the evenings can get pretty cold pretty quickly, especially when daylight savings rolls around. You can combat the chills and extend your pergola season with an additional heat source. A classic look is a self-contained fire pit or chiminea, and the lattice roof of the pergola allows the smoke to escape easily, leaving you with the residual heat. You can also go for an electric heater, which is a great option if you’re worried about fire and your wooden pergola, and if your pergola is next to your home.

Why Choose A Pergola?

You have a variety of options when you’re looking at upgrading your backyard experience and each has their own benefits and drawbacks. 

Other Outdoor Structures

If you’re looking for some simple shade, an awning that stretches out over your patio can work, but is susceptible to sun and environmental damage. A privacy screen keeps prying eyes away from your backyard, but they take up a lot of space and can detract from the overall aesthetics of your property. You might choose a gazebo, but these require a lot of foundation work and tend to be larger and come with a large budget. 

The Benefits of a Pergola

A pergola brings all these benefits of these outdoor structures without the drawbacks. You can install a pergola on top of your deck or patio to have an extra defined space outside your home, or have it as a freestanding structure as a stunning focal point for your garden. Pergolas offer a natural layer of privacy, and you can add to this with drapes or curtains to allow the breezes in. Pergolas can be custom made to whatever size and shape you desire and the simple construction means that they are budget friendly so you can start elevating your backyard sooner than you think.

Pergola Design Choices

As you’re thinking about how a pergola could revolutionize your backyard, here are some design choices to consider to help you create your dream outdoor oasis

Location, Location, Location

Just like with any property project, the location of your pergola will have the biggest impact on the rest of the design process, as well as the aesthetic appeal of your new outdoor structure. Putting it next to your home will create a visual transition from inside to outside and give you a unique eating or dining area. To turn it into a focal centre of your garden, construct it in the middle of your yard as a quiet space, or a command centre to supervise the chaos from. 

Construction Materials

You’ll also need to consider the construction materials that you use for your pergola. The classic look (think Italian trattoria!) is thick wooden posts and beams. This does require ongoing maintenance, but will look elegant no matter where you put it. For a more modern look, consider aluminum and vinyl. This gives you a variety of colours to play with, and works best next to your home to match and mingle with the manmade materials found on the outside of your home. 

Natural Shade

The easiest way to provide some shade for your pergola is to buy one of the many climbing plants that flourish in Calgary’s climate and put them in a big pot by the foot of each post. Over time, they will grow up and over your pergola and give you the classic Italian pergola aesthetic. Consider plants like jasmine or wisteria if you want to add some summer scents, or go for classics like climbing roses or ivy if you want quick growth and some easy colours. 

Immediate Shade

The only problem with choosing to grow your pergola shade is that it can take a long time for the plants to grow tall enough to provide full coverage. If you want more immediate cover, you need to think about how to add shade in the form of fabric, screens or a combination of both. You’ll be able to get a degree of privacy as well as keeping cool and comfortable all summer long. 

Shade On Top

When most people think about sun shade enhancements for pergolas, they think about adding layers to the lattice on the top of the pergola. This is a quick way to get some shade as they will fit directly onto your pergola. A simple option is a sheet of fabric cut to the same size of your pergola with a little excess to come down over the edge. If you’ve got a bigger budget or like your outdoor gadgets, you can install mechanical shutters between each layer of the lattice, allowing you to open and close them depending on the weather and your personal preferences.

Shade On The Side

If you’re looking for a little privacy in combination with your pergola shade, then you’ll want to think about screens or fabric that attach to the sides of your pergola. Don’t immediately think of options that will completely block out the sun (and therefore your view) as it’ll be hard to see the benefit of shade on the sides. Instead, think about a loose weave screen, similar to one you put over your windows in summer, that will keep the bugs and prying eyes out, but allow you to see the garden and relax in peace. You can also install lightweight, neutral tone fabric that will float and billow in the wind like sails while giving you shade and privacy at the same time. 

Different Uses of a Spring Pergola

Most people have some sort of mental image of a pergola: a post and beam wooden structure that sits in a prominent space in your garden. It can be draped in fairy lights or covered in climbing plants to draw attention to it, or left unadorned to let the quality of the wood speak for itself. No matter how you decorate it, you can use a DIY pergola kit in many different ways:

• A new dining space – one of the most common ways to use a pergola is to use it as an outdoor dining or entertaining space. This is simple to do by making sure you’ve got a flat space underneath it (such as a flagstone patio or wooden deck) and then some high quality furniture that matches your overall garden aesthetic. Consider adding some ambience with a wireless speaker set up and finish the vibe by moving your grill (or upgrading your current model!) next to the pergola so you can chat while you cook.
• A quiet zone – another popular option is to set your pergola in a quieter space of your backyard and create a zen zone as a place you can escape from the noise and heat of the warmer months. You can achieve a small level of privacy by hooking up linen panels, and investing in comfy outdoor seating, or even a chaise lounge or two for a more relaxed vibe. To finish things off, consider adding a small fridge for cold drinks, and a small cabinet to hold your glasses. 
• A focal point – finally, your DIY pergola kit can be used to create a focal point for your garden. In this case, it’s unlikely that you’ll put furniture underneath it, and more probable that you’ll put a series of walkways (made from either paving slabs or stamped concrete) that lead to and through your new pergola. This new space becomes an excellent way to showcase some of your favourite flowers and plants, as well as creating a beautiful setting for photos and selfies throughout the summer. 

Why Choose a DIY Pergola Kit?

You can hire someone to come and build a new pergola for you, but you’ll get a lot more flexibility in timescales, budget and overall design when you choose a DIY pergola kit. They’re relatively simple structures and you can turn the building process into a fun weekend project to give your backyard a spring makeover.

What Is A Pergola?

If you’re not familiar with a pergola, it’s still likely that you’ll have seen one without knowing what it was. The key features of a pergola are the simple post and beam design. The load-bearing beams sit on posts attached to the deck, with rafters attached to your existing flat surface that support a series of horizontal lattices. Some larger pergolas will have the beams going in both directions to give the roof of the pergola more strength, and you can opt for this design if you want more shade under your pergola.

Location, Location, Location

As with all good home improvement projects, the key to making your outdoor life better with pergola is choosing where to put it. A pergola will quickly become a statement piece in your yard due to its size and contrasting colours, so you need to think about where you’re going to put this new addition. Fortunately, they are simple structures so it’s not hard to visualize how they would look in your garden. 

A Transitional Space

The most common way that you’ll see a pergola being used in Calgary backyards is right outside the back door. This is because installing a pergola on top of your existing deck or patio can save you time and money when it comes to digging solid foundations for the posts. Putting a pergola next to your home creates a transitional space, both functionally and aesthetically. It creates the feeling of an extra room in your house, and many people use a deck based pergola as an outdoor dining room or seating space. It also blends the best of being inside (the shade and furniture) with the best of being outside (the warmth and the breezes) so put a pergola on your deck to get the best of both worlds. 

A Garden Centrepiece

If you want your pergola to be something that people leave your home talking about, then you want to find a location where it becomes the focal piece of the garden. Often this will be in an area of your garden where there’s nothing else nearby so your pergola stands out, and you’ll increase the visual effect by creating paths with gravel or flagstones that lead to and from the pergola. For this type of pergola, you’ll want to go for a classic wooden frame which gives you a blank canvas for additional decorations and artistic touches. 

A Quiet Hideout

Finally, a pergola can be a great place to create somewhere quiet away from the hubbub of your home and busy family life. If this is your goal for making your outdoor life better, then finding a secluded area of your garden for your pergola project will be key. You can add extra layers of privacy with shrubs or trees around your pergola, or simply hanging drapes or curtains between the posts to make your perfect pergola hideout. 

Popular Pergola Designs

As you’re looking for a way to upgrade your yard to make your outdoor living better, a pergola is an affordable  and efficient way to add some classic beauty to your garden, as well as creating a unique space to sit under. You can use a pergola to define an outdoor dining area, a sheltered place to grill or simply a place to sit around a fire put to ward off the cooler evenings. Some popular pergola designs include:

Add a trellis for privacy

One of the slight drawbacks of a pergola is that it is completely open on all sides. While on the one hand this means that you get unparalleled 360 degree views out over your yard, it also means that your dinner party is visible to everyone in your neighbourhood. Adding a trellis to one or more sides of your pergola allows you to block off prying eyes while also giving you a place to add lights or climbing flowers to make your pergola area into a private oasis. 

Incorporate your garden

If you look up pictures of pergolas in Mediterranean countries, you’ll see that they always have greenery growing up the sides. Incorporate your garden with climbing flowers in pots at the base of each post. Great options include clematis, wisteria and jasmine for an extra scent of summer. If you live in the right conditions, you can grow different varieties of grapes that will climb up the posts and across the lattice to give you dangling fruit when you need a summer time snack. 

Enhance existing features 

Finally, you can enhance your yard by picking up on existing design features from your home with your pergola. If the siding on your house has a unique pattern or wood type, use these in your pergola design. You can also use your new pergola to frame special design aspects of your home such as a second floor balcony or bay window. You can also use your pergola to create a contrasting design effect. For example, if your home has wooden sidings (or wooden effects), then choosing an aluminium finish can make your pergola pop out. You can also use your pergola design to dictate the kind of outdoor furniture that you put underneath it so you can upgrade your whole outdoor living experience. 

What Is A Pergola?

If you’ve ever seen a movie set in Italy, or been to a stylized Italian restaurant with outdoor dining, you’ll have seen a pergola in action. In the classical form, it’s a wooden post and beam structure that sits on top of a deck or patio to mark out a dedicated space. The posts support a lattice frame of beams, leaving the sides open to the breeze while giving dappled shade and a beautiful aesthetic to your outdoor area. If they’re attached to a house or structure,  require no digging of foundations and the base plates screw directly into your deck or patio, meaning the whole structure can be installed inside a couple of days. 

How A Pergola Enhances Your Patio Season

Most people use a pergola on their deck as a way of creating a kind of outside dining room. While there’s no doors or windows, the pergola shows you and your family where the dining table should be, and gives you the impression of eating indoors while enjoying the best of patio season in Calgary. Some easy ways to enhance your pergola deck experience include:

• Climbing flowers – the stereotypical mental image of a pergola often has vines and flowers drooping down between the lattice beams. It’s not hard to replicate this by putting large pots at the foot of each post and planting climbing flowers such as clematis, wisteria or jasmine if you want some summer scents to accompany your meal. 
• String lights – while the Calgary summer provides more than enough sunlight during the day, you can add string lights to your pergola to allow you to make use of the last of the warm evenings outside. Bigger lightbulbs are better for larger gathering (and you’ll need less of them to light your deck) while smaller fairy style LED lights make for a more intimate and romantic setting for your dinners. 
• Fabric covers – finally, while the purpose of the lattice framework of the pergola roof is to allow light in, you can add lightweight fabric covers between the beams to provide a little shade. You can put these on a rack meaning that you can change how much of the pergola roof is covered on any given day. If you choose lighter colours, you’ll get the protection from the strongest midday sun while giving your and your dinner guests some cooler shade allowing you to enjoy every last day of patio season.

What Is A DIY Pergola Kit?

Just like any other outdoor structure in your yard, you can spend a small fortune on your pergola project to get someone to come and do the work for you, from designing and measuring to building and finishing. However, the more outside help you need, the more you’ll end up paying, which is why a DIY pergola kit is a great option for those on a budget. A DIY pergola kit gives you all the materials you need as well as the directions to complete the project yourself. It’s cheaper as they’re often mass produced by DIY pergola kit makers, and you’ll have a limited number of options for your new pergola space.

Make It Dreamy

One of the biggest pros of choosing a DIY pergola project is that you can get started straight away. While a contractor will help you custom build your pergola and will make sure the job is done right, a DIY pergola kit puts you at the front of the line, and it’s one of the easiest jobs to do since we use strong, long-lasting aluminum rather than wood for the structure. Once it’s built, you’ll want to find some ways to make it a dreamy outdoor retreat:

• Go soft – as you’re planning out your pergola furniture, think soft. This is easy to do if you’re planning on making it into an outdoor living room, as you just need to make sure your cushions and pillows have that dreamy soft luxury. However, you can still get that same feeling in a dining room by choosing chairs and tables with rounded edges, and you can still find seat cushions that will feel soft and comfortable for you and your guests. 
• Add drapes – a pergola is by its very design an open sided structure. For some, this is the whole point as you can get great views out over your garden. For others, you might want to consider adding drapes or curtains to the sides to create more of an intimate atmosphere. Just make sure to remember the ties so you can get the best of both worlds. 
• Overhead lighting – finally, when you picture a romantic, dreamy pergola in your backyard, the lighting will play a large part. The lattice structure of the pergola roof means it’s perfect for hanging string lights to provide a soft and romantic lighting. You can add more light and a more dramatic effect by winding string lights up each of the posts to make your pergola the true centrepiece of your garden.

Exploring The Idea Of Hygge

There is an old tradition in Denmark that centres around the concept of “hygge”, which roughly translates as a cosy lifestyle. For Danish people, something can be considered hygge if it involves friends and families, soft furnishing, good food and an overall feeling of safety and comfort. Your fall pergola is the perfect way to explore the idea of hygge with some of these ideas:

• Upgrade your soft furnishings – given that the goal of most outdoor furniture is to encourage people to spend more time sitting on it, the large majority feels uncomfortable after a while. Simply adding cushioned seats to your dining chairs is a great way to add some hygge to your fall festivities. You should also think about bringing your blanket game outside, which will give you the perfect reason to buy a storage ottoman to keep them all in. There’s nothing better than snuggling up under a blanket beneath your pergola when the fall sun sets. 
• Add a fire pit – there’s something inherently magical about the flames of fire in the fall; the smell of woodsmoke, and the mixture of almost-too-hot heat with the cold air is something that you’ll come back to again and again during the fall months. Your pergola is a great place for a small fire pit to gather round, and you can find smokeless stoves if you’re worried about stray embers. A fire pit is also a great place to get rid of those pesky twigs and leaves that come with the changing season. 
• Bring in the fall colours – finally, you always need to think about your pergola decorations as a way of making them the focal point of your outdoor entertaining area. Fortunately, fall in Calgary provides you with a solid colour palette, so make sure your soft furnishing, mugs and tableware all reflect the reds, yellows and browns of the season. It’s also a great opportunity to pick out fall flowering plants like chrysanthemums and place them around the base of each post to bring a pop of fall colour to your festivities. 

The best thing about dreaming of a pergola this fall is that they are quick and easy to install, especially if you put them on top of an existing deck or patio. Both of these options give your pergola the solid base it needs to support the weight of the beams and removes the need for digging foundations. So call today to start your fall pergola journey. 

How Does A Pergola Work?

When you hear the word ‘pergola’, images of an Italian trattoria come to mind, or possibly a simple archway at an outdoor wedding. While there’s truth in both of these scenarios, the fact is that you can create some pergola magic in just about any way you can imagine. The basic structure of sturdy upright posts with a lattice beam roof can be extended into a variety of different shapes. It goes without saying that the more angles and non-standard lengths you choose for your pergola, the more your project will cost, but it’s easy to come up with a design that will fit directly on top of your patio.

Create Some Fall Pergola Magic

The simplicity of a pergola means that you can work with a contractor to have one installed on top of your patio in  next to no time. The patio provides the sturdy base for your pergola and removes the need for deep foundational holes. This means that you can create some fall pergola magic this year. Here are some ways to bring some magic to your fall evenings with a pergola:

• Set the scene with lights – start your journey with some low level lighting. In most cases, a series of string or fairy lights will look magical, and you can weave the strings around the posts and through the lattice to make your whole pergola structure come to light. Another option is to install sconces on each of the posts which will create interesting shadows while allowing you and your guests to keep the party going for as long as the fall warmth allows. 
• Add a firepit – as the fall evenings get colder across the city, a fire pit will allow you to use your pergola for longer. If you’re worried about live flames, you can buy electric fire pits which pump out heat without the smoke or possibility of sparks or embers. 
• Install music – finally, you’ll always want some background music as you enjoy your time outside under your pergola. The posts of a pergola make for excellent holders for small Bluetooth speakers, and you’ll create a magical effect of being serenaded by your favourite bands without messy wires or leads to spoil the effect. 

Make this fall the year that you start making magical memories and call Desert Sun Patios today to start your pergola journey.

Benefits Of A DIY Pergola Kit

Pergolas come in all shapes, sizes and designs which means that your pergola project is only constrained by your budget and your imagination. As with all outdoor home improvement construction projects, you’ll be able to find local building contractors who will plan and build your pergola for you. However, this considerably increases your overall budget, so a DIY pergola kit is a much more affordable option. They tend to come in more uniform sizes to keep the costs down, but unless you have a tiny yard, it’s unlikely that you’ll benefit from a custom sized outdoor pergola. An affordable DIY pergola kit means that you can take on the project on your own timescale, and with a few friends helping out, you’ll be able to transform your backyard in next to no time. 

Easy Outdoor Pergola Ideas

Once you’ve decided to take on a DIY pergola project as your major spring backyard upgrade, you get to plan out how to make it your own. Some popular outdoor pergola ideas include:

• Create a dining space – it’s important to think about how your new pergola space will be used throughout the summer when you’re installing it. A creative use is to make it into a romantic dining area. For this, you’ll want a solid floor (such as a raised deck or stone patio), and access to electricity so you can string lights across the beams. Invest in a good quality outdoor dining set, and upgrade your grill to complete the set up for a summer of outdoor dining fun. 
• Let it grow – most Calgary homeowners will have the traditional image of a pergola covered in climbing plants and drooping flowers, and it’s really not that hard to bring that picture perfect vision to reality. Either create wide flower beds around the base of each post as you dig it in, or buy big pots to place against the bottom of the pergola. In either case, do research about the types of climbing plants you want (roses and wisteria grow quickly, while jasmine and honeysuckle will smell amazing) and then let nature do its thing. 
• Simple elegance – finally, there is always something to be said for a “less is more” approach to pergola decoration. Keep everyone’s focus on the simple beauty of the post and beam structure by avoiding clutter underneath it. You can achieve this with fold away furniture, or some simple understated wicker pieces to allow the simple elegance of your new backyard space to shine through.