What is the best way to finish of our main outdoor living space? We are nearly finished building our home and Im struggling with pool decking area. It is a courtyard pool and our loungeroom overlooks the pool. Its not a large area, our bricks are charcoal (steel blue/grays), the fence will be a semi-frameless glass fence with precious pearl silver posts (so they disappear). The space between the sliding glass doors and the start of the pool is approx 2.9 metres (the length from one end to where the pergola starts is approx 11 metres.- either end of the pool is approx 1.540 metres and the structure on the right is a pergola, which will have white horizontal slats to screen out the pool equipment and will house our bbq and out door table. This under pergola space is approx 22 square metres. We're thinking concrete with some scoring/or embedding of an off white/cream flat pebble running in horizontal lines approx 2 metres apart (so only 2) the length of the house/to end of the pergola area.
I really like this type of look below -which has segments of earth/pebbles/plants as in this photo below, but is the space too tight and am I better to stick to simple, eg concrete and scoring of lines? Appreciate any input - decking is out due to maintenace issues and it is going to cop way too much hot northerly sun here in Aus. Pool size is 7.15 long x 3 metres depth- Space around pool is tight approx 900mls to glass fence. Cheers Helen