Your backyard is your playland. It’s a place where you can melt worries and stress away and enjoy summer days and nights.
The possibilities for creating a great space that meets all of your entertainment and relaxation needs are endless.
But you have a family, and that means you have kids, too. And while you want your backyard to be suitable for the adults, you also don’t want to leave the children out of the equation.
Let’s talk about some kid-friendly backyard ideas for Greater Chicago, so you can have a landscape that’s suitable for all the members of our family.
4 Family-Friendly Backyard Design Ideas For Your Chicagoland Home
There are so many ideas you can come up with when it comes to family-friendly backyard design.
Whether you’re looking through a magazine or checking out online landscape makeovers or even home and garden television landscape transformations, you’ll see quite a few ways to take a boring backyard and make it fun and inviting,
While the colors and materials you choose may be unique to your home, some of these classic elements can work for bringing children into your space safely.
1. Add Shade Protection and Outdoor Entertainment
We all love the sun in summertime, but no one wants a sunburn. It can certainly take the fun out of time outdoors.
Adding shade to your backyard can benefit both adults and kids of all ages, making it an all-inclusive family backyard idea.
Try incorporating a pergola or pavilion to add shade and a visually appealing landscape structure at the same time.
Pergolas bring a vertical element, as well as some screening from neighbors, which offers privacy. You can add fabrics or plants for more color and cover. Pavilions have roofs, so you’re protected from both sun and rain in an outdoor room of sorts with open walls. You can even add an outdoor television to the space and enjoy sports or movie nights outside with the family.
2. Add Ambiance and Fun With Fire Features
What kid doesn’t love s’mores?
Adding a fire feature is a way to amp up your backyard fun for adults and children.
To make it an even more kid-friendly backyard landscaping idea, make sure it’s installed with the utmost attention to safety by using a professional that builds it properly and designs it well.
Fire features add warmth and dancing light during cool evenings, and add the element of roasting marshmallows or hotdogs for fun nights outside.
While the kids mix graham crackers, chocolate squares, and gooey marshmallows, the adults can sit back and chat. It’s a win-win.
3. Extend the Day
Summer days are long, but something you want them to be even longer.
Adding landscape lighting in family-friendly backyard design ensures your children can enjoy warm days outdoors even as the sun sets.
Plus, lighting adds a safety element. You can see them playing outside, and they can see where they’re going as they play tag or run around the yard. It also adds ambiance for the adults and helps them navigate pathways, stairs, and getting around in the dark.
4. Play Structures
Playsets and structures are natural to think about adding to your kid-friendly backyard landscaping when you want to give the children some outside fun.
But you can have this type of space without ruining your Chicago landscape aesthetics. An elegant structure that blends into your landscape in a functional way and matches your other decor can be elegant and not garish.
You can also include play areas like rock walls, splash areas, or pools that are elegantly designed to give your yard a unique structural element, while also providing spaces for children to play outside.
Boost Your Kid-Friendly Backyard Landscaping
You might think that family-friendly backyard design ideas are full of bright colors that don’t match your traditional Chicago landscape or that they involve lots of plastic playsets that are eyesores. But that’s not the case.
There are kid-friendly backyard ideas that can make your backyard functional as well as fabulous.
Trying to envision these possibilities can be overwhelming when you’re currently staring at a boring backyard or one full of toys and trinkets. If you’d like to have a space for both the adults and kids to enjoy that looks appealing and makes your landscape the place everyone wants to hang out, give KD Landscape’s professionals a call. We have experience working on residential landscapes that fit the family needs of young and old and still look amazing, adapting as the children grow.
Ready to see how KD Landscape can transform your backyard into one that is both enjoyable for both adults and kids? We’d love to share our design and installation expertise with you and deliver a custom space. Get started today with a free consultation. Together, we can prepare a plan that works best for you and your family.
