Does your pool house pay homage to the jet-set glamour of Sixties Nassau? Or is it inspired by a traditional Japanese tea house? Or a Tuscan farmhouse? These days the smartest ones are not just somewhere to dry off but spaces in which your architect, landscaper and interior designer combine their talents to dream up some fun.
Inevitably, the most impressive examples are in countries that have the right weather for them. The prince of the palatial pool house is the Miami-based designer Fernando Wong, whose clients include Ridley Scott, Cher, Matt Damon and Pharrell Williams, for whom he envisioned a pared-back Japanese-style garden and pool house. But many customers are hoping for something more outlandish.
For a private client in Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, one of the world’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, Wong employed “classical architectural principles to create an elegant Caribbean Georgian-style structure that is perfect for entertaining”. He drew inspiration for the opulent aesthetic from Slim Aarons’s images of Nassau in the Sixties and Seventies, when the photographer documented the leisure pursuits of socialites and celebrities. Its distinctive colour, called Dynasty Pink, is typical of the location. If Billionaire Barbie had a pool house, this is how it would look.
Wong has become so sought after on this side of the Atlantic that he has been invited to create a terrace (theme: tropical oasis in prewar Palm Beach) for the Wow!house interiors showcase, which brings global talent to London in June.
In the chilly, drizzly UK, pool houses are less likely to resemble Wong’s open-fronted, columned pavilions, instead taking the form of mini versions of the main house or sometimes a piece of fantasy in the tradition of an architectural folly. For a north London project Laurence Holder at Octagon delivered a Japanese-inspired pool house, which he describes as being “similar to a tea house, with an ornate overhanging roof and wooden cladding” but fitted inside with “wine fridges and crystal glassware housed in bespoke cabinetry, waterfall showers and extra-deep bathtubs on the decking”.
Advertisement
Others want the spaces to be all about fun, he says, and insist on adding vintage arcade games or an outdoor projector trained on the white façade, so the family can watch films while swimming after dark.
These sorts of demands aren’t one-offs, according to the designer Katharine Pooley. Her assessment? People reprioritising after Covid. “Life is all about fitness, health and family time now,” she says. “One of my pool house projects has a drum kit and guitars so they can make music. Another has a tennis court, a padel court, a kids’ pool and a sandpit, plus a dog pool.” Such spaces are far from an afterthought, she adds. “We’ve done quite a few in the past four years and the clients are just as excited by the pool houses as the rest of the house. We did a really gorgeous hexagonal one for a young couple in Cannes who wanted to give it that Ralph Lauren feel, so we used 55m of the brand’s blue and white Eastpoint ticking on the walls and the ceiling, making a tented interior.” Those who prefer to think of a pool house as a party pad might call Amy Dalrymple: she is installing a bar and DJ decks in one she’s working on for a British family, in an old bastide in France.
“They love to host big parties, they spend summers in Ibiza and Mustique, and so we were tasked with creating a space that had a similar vibe,” she says. When the party is over, the pool house transforms from nightclub to breakfast club: a worktop folds down over the DJ decks. “Although the pool house is only 10m from the main house, it is fully kitted out with everything you’d need to host lunch and drinks by the pool,” Dalrymple says.
For the art connoisseur, a pool house can also be a place to display collections. One such space is at the Goldwyn House, a mansion in the Hollywood Hills that dates to 1916 and was once the home of the film producer Samuel Goldwyn. Today it is owned by David Alhadeff, the founder of the design gallery Future Perfect, and its white-stuccoed, open-fronted Sixties pool house works partly as a poolside living room and partly as an exhibition space in which visitors can view the gallerist’s collection. It includes a spectacular DimoreMilano pendant that resembles the solar system; an apt symbol — because the pool house is a space around which family life revolves.
In fact, it’s so special, Alhadeff says, “I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.”
