An outdoor area earns its investment on the days when the weather is unremarkable — not warm, not raining, a bit breezy. Any terrace works in July. The commercial question is whether yours works in April and October, and whether it works after seven in the evening.

We renovated the outdoor entertainment area at Easton Golf Club in Norfolk, and the design problems that project raised are the same ones every pub garden, hotel terrace, restaurant courtyard and club veranda in this country has to solve. They are rarely about furniture.

Start with the trading question

Before anything is drawn, the operator needs to answer four questions.

What is this space for? Overflow seating on busy days, a distinct destination with its own offer, an events space, or somewhere for people to stand with a drink. These produce completely different designs. Overflow seating can be simple. A destination needs its own identity, its own service and its own reason to be chosen over the inside.

When is it meant to trade? Lunchtimes only, evenings, all year, events. Evening use means lighting and heat. Year-round use means shelter and a hard, drained surface. Events mean power, access and a plan for setting up and clearing down.

Who serves it? The single biggest determinant of whether an outdoor area is profitable. See below.

What does it do to the neighbours? Also below, and it decides your planning position.

Answer those and the design largely follows. Skip them and you get a nice terrace that nobody staffs properly.

Shelter is the entire design problem

In Britain, the constraint is not temperature. It is wind and rain, and wind matters more than people expect: a sheltered seat at fourteen degrees is comfortable, an exposed one at nineteen is not.

Options, roughly in order of commitment:

  • Planting, screens and built windbreaks. Cheapest, effective, and they define the space socially as well as physically. A terrace divided into sheltered pockets trades better than one open expanse, because people choose enclosure.
  • Umbrellas and parasols. Flexible, but they need storing, they fail in wind, and large ones need proper bases or fixed sockets designed into the surface at construction.
  • Retractable awnings and canopies. Good shoulder-season answer. They need a structure to fix to and they need to shed water somewhere that is not onto a customer.
  • A permanent structure. A veranda, a pergola with a solid roof, a garden room or a shelter. The most expensive and the only one that reliably converts a summer space into a year-round one.

Our completed Reflection Pool and Entertainment structure in South Norfolk is a useful reference here: a permanent shelter designed so that an outdoor space stays usable when the weather turns, rather than a canopy added to a terrace that was designed without one.

One thing to check early with any enclosure: as an outdoor area becomes more enclosed by walls, screens and a roof, it can cross the threshold at which smoke-free legislation applies, and it may also change the fire and ventilation position. The definitions turn on how much of the perimeter is enclosed and must be checked for the actual design — this catches out a lot of well-intentioned canopy projects.

Service routes decide profitability

Watch a member of staff cross an outdoor area with a tray. Count the seconds. Multiply by every drink served on a busy evening.

The difference between an outdoor space that makes money and one that quietly loses it is usually the distance and the obstacles between the seats and the point of service. Design for it:

  • Put service close. An outside bar, a service hatch, a satellite dispense point or at minimum a well-placed till and glass-return station. Sending staff back inside through a busy dining room for every round is how outdoor areas end up under-served and slow.
  • Keep the route clear and level. Steps, thresholds, gravel and narrow gaps between tables all slow service and cause spillage. A tray does not go up a step.
  • Plan for glass and waste return. If there is nowhere to stack, tables do not get cleared, and uncleared tables suppress turnover.
  • Power and water where they will be needed. Retro-fitting a supply across a finished terrace is disproportionately expensive.

At a golf club the pattern is specific — arrivals from the course rather than the car park, a natural surge at the end of a round, and a mix of members and visitors. The service layout has to reflect the way people actually arrive.

Ground, drainage and levels

The unglamorous half of the project, and where most of the money goes.

Surfaces need to be firm, level enough for tables and chairs not to rock, non-slip when wet, and drained so that puddles do not stand. They also need to take chair legs being dragged across them thousands of times.

Falls and drainage need designing properly. Water shed off a new canopy concentrates at its edge, and a terrace that drains towards the building rather than away from it will cause problems inside. Where a large impermeable area is being created, surface water disposal may be a planning and drainage issue in its own right.

Level changes deserve real attention. A terrace stepping down from a building creates an accessibility problem and a service problem simultaneously. Solving both with a considered ramp and a single generous level tends to cost less than solving them separately later.

Light and heat

Lighting does two jobs: it makes the space usable after dark and it makes it look occupied, which draws people out.

Layer it. Low-level and table-level light for atmosphere, defined light on circulation and steps for safety, and enough light on the service point for staff to work. Avoid a small number of bright fittings — they flatten the space and spill onto neighbours. Warm colour temperature, dimmable, on separate circuits, controlled from inside.

Heat is a harder question than it used to be, on both running cost and carbon grounds. Shelter first, always: reducing wind exposure does more for comfort per pound than any heater. Where heating is used, targeted radiant heat under a canopy is far more effective than trying to warm open air.

Noise, neighbours and conditions

Outdoor drinking and dining generates noise late in the evening, when background levels are lowest and neighbours are least tolerant. This is the most common reason for objection and for restrictive conditions.

Where an application is needed, expect scrutiny of hours of use, amplified music, external lighting and how the space is managed at closing time. A proposal that arrives with a considered position on those — acoustic screening, a defined closing time for outdoor use, lighting designed to avoid spill, a management plan — is in a far stronger position than one that leaves the authority to impose its own.

The same applies to the premises licence, which is a separate consent from planning. Outdoor areas, their hours and their use for licensable activity need to be reflected in the licence, and the two consents need to be consistent with each other.

Furniture, storage and wear

Contract-grade outdoor furniture, chosen for how it survives a Norfolk winter and how it stacks. Consider:

  • Whether it stays out all year, and if not, where it goes. Storage is a building, and it is always forgotten.
  • Weight. Heavy enough not to blow over, light enough for staff to move repeatedly.
  • Fixings for parasol bases, planters and screens, built into the surface rather than sitting on it.
  • How it is cleaned, and how long that takes each morning.

Accessibility

An outdoor area is part of the venue and has to be usable by everyone who uses the venue. That means step-free access on a route that is actually the main route, not a detour round the back, adequate circulation between tables, a proportion of tables at accessible heights, and accessible facilities reachable without going through the kitchen.

Designing this in from the start costs very little. Retro-fitting it into a completed terrace costs a great deal.

Talk to us before the groundworks

Outdoor projects are usually specified as a surface and some furniture and then found to be a drainage, servicing, planning and licensing project. Establishing that at the start changes the budget you set and the sequence you work in.

We offer a free initial consultation: a look at the site, the constraints, what the space needs to do commercially, the planning and technical challenges, and indicative timelines.

See our hospitality and leisure design and leisure and fitness design services, or book a free initial consultation. Call +44 (0) 1508 830 310 or email info@archidite.com.