A fire pit is pretty much all you need to create an outdoor room. Pull up a few chairs (or rocks) for seating, and you suddenly have a new living space—without a costly remodel.
A well-sited fire pit will take advantage of a beautiful view and provides an incentive to head outdoors in cool weather. (There must be a good spot for one in your garden.) For landscaping ideas, we’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite fire pits, including some from members of our Architect and Designer Directory, as inspiration.
Carmel Valley, California
Above: The concrete and steel fire pit is landscape architect Bernard Trainor’s design, creating an outdoor living space for house by architects Sagan Piechota in California’s Carmel Valley. Photograph by Joe Fletcher courtesy of Sagan Piechota Architecture.
Above: Landscape architect Scott Lewis ringed a fire pit with four Serene Lounge Chairs from Henry Hall in a drought-tolerant landscape in the Napa Valley. Photograph by Scott Lewis Landscape Architecture.
Sonoma, California
Above: In a meadow designed by landscape architecture firm Terremoto, boulders of Sonoma fieldstone provide a ring of seating around the Corten-steel-edged fire pit. Photograph by Caitlin Atkinson.
Above: Garden designer Julie Moir Messervy designed a series of terraced spaces for her own garden on a sloped property in Vermont. A stone terrace with a fire pit, bordered by beds of flowering perennials, offers views of the mown fields below. Photograph by Susan Teare courtesy of JMMDS.
Stinson Beach, California
Above: In Stinson Beach, a few miles north of San Francisco, Marin-based Blasen Landscape Architecture created a family retreat that welcomes the sea without capitulating to its harsh demands. A sunken fire pit is sheltered from wind. Photograph by Marion Brenner courtesy of Blasen Landscape Architecture.
Above: Massachusetts-based landscape architect Matthew Cunningham designed a fire pit patio made of big slabs of reclaimed granite embedded in a lawn in Lamoine, Maine. Photograph by Matthew Cunningham.
Above: A permeable black gravel patio surrounds the pit on a Texas mesa, where landscape architects Studio Outside took advantage of the site’s best features–sunlight, breezes, and panoramic views of distant mountains. Photograph by Arlen Kennedy and Robert Reck, courtesy of Studio Outside.
Above: On the oceanfront in Scarborough, Maine, Whitten Architects partnered with landscape architect Todd Richardson to create a strong connection between the house and landscape. The fire pit patio has 180-degree views of the ocean. Photograph by Trent Bell courtesy of Whitten Architects.
Above: LA-based designer Judy Kameon created a decomposed granite pad to surround a fire pit, creating a patio seating area in a Studio City garden. Photograph by Laure Joliet.
Above: An outdoor lounge area has a fire pit as a focal point in a garden in Bellevue, Washington’s Clyde Hill neighborhood. Todd Lozier’s design-build firm Lochwood Lozier worked with designer Lisa Staton to re-work the interiors of the house, and designer Karen Stefonick came up with plan to re-imagine the landscape. Photograph courtesy of Belathée Photography.
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