Best Pool DesignPRODUCT DESIGN
Builder/Remodeler
$9,000,001 - $11,000,000
Residential
For people escaping the cold, the pool is often the whole reason for the house — and while this 13′ × 50′, 20,000-gallon pool isn’t the biggest, it works the entire back of the home and the waterfront better than pools twice its size. It’s a negative edge spilling toward the canal, with three fire bowls centered between a pair of decorative pergolas that frame the view without blocking it. Through real design study, we placed those pergolas to strike the right balance of privacy and openness — a genuine concern on a waterfront lot where the neighbor sits just across the canal.
The details that set it apart:
The pergolas feature aluminum framing wrapped in PVC to meet wind code, with supports beefed up where they tie into the pool shell at the trough
Custom 3″×3″ stainless-steel scuppers on each pillar, fabricated to order
Three 32″ Grand Effects fire bowls, mounted on stone bases just above the waterline so they appear to float
A negative edge that spills down a three-dimensional, textured stacked tile, so you actually hear the water trickle; a 360-degree spa; and an upgraded dual-pump system for clean sheet-flow
The interior is an upgraded Pebble Tec Midnight Blue finish — and dark pebble is notorious for curing splotchy — so to keep the color dead even, we had a technician brush the surface down every hour, on the hour for multiple days as it cured. The payoff is a deep, flawless blue most pools this color never reach.
The hardest part you can’t even see. We pushed the pool right up against the house, directly under the upper-story lanai, which meant excavating below the pool first to build the support holding that lanai up, then excavating the pool itself. A tumbled shellstone limestone deck (24″×24″) steps down to a Trex deck in “Toasted Sand” running all the way to the seawall, so the whole back yard reads as one continuous extension of the pool.