On the most miserable winter days, it can be hard to believe that it will ever end and we’ll be out basking in the warm again, but we’re just weeks away from spring, and planning for it is one way of beating the winter blues. Outdoor room extensions can become a little bit neglected through the colder months if they haven’t been designed with year-round use in mind in the first place, so here are some ideas to get outdoor rooms spruced up and ready for when it’s time to be making full use of them again.

The BBQ is the quintessential Australian choice for family cooking as well as entertaining friends. Given our love of the Aussie BBQ, it should come as no surprise to see all the alternative forms of outdoor cooking that are springing up as well. Setting up your backyard or pergola area to incorporate a range of different cooking options is not only becoming trendy, it’s also very useful, allowing you to get outside as much as possible and enjoy the wonderful Australian climate. Here are a just a few of the outdoor cooking options available.

Patios are one of those useful, hybrid additions to a home that can make an enormous difference to the way you can use your space – for normal everyday living, and for entertaining. They’re not walled, so they’re not a room, but they’re solidly roofed, so they offer a great, weatherproof indoor/outdoor space for all sorts of activities.

When you build outdoor rooms, you have a couple of options in how you approach the décor. You can either work with the existing style of your house and garden to create seamless transitions between different zones, which can greatly enhance your sense of space. Alternatively, you can create something that is deliberately different – think very modern extensions on older houses – to take yourself, family and guests into something new in your outdoor room.

Outdoor rooms can be useful all year round. They provide a cool shaded place for entertaining in the summer, and can be nice and cosy for winter as well. Here’s how you can construct your outdoor room for year-round comfort, and make it warm and inviting for the winter months.