50 Beautiful Backyard Landscaping Ideas From HGTV Shows and Pros

Is your backyard in need of a renovation? We have plenty of backyard landscaping ideas — from design ideas for small backyards and backyards that slope to family-friendly designs and backyards designed for entertaining.

Make your backyard a place that reflects your style, whether you prefer a contemporary-style space with succulents and abundant hardscapes or a cottage-style look with pathways or water features framed by masses of colorful perennials. If you like to host outdoor parties, consider adding a fire pit or fireplace for guests to gather around.

Fire pits can work in all kinds of backyard schemes, on decks, poolside, in a lush forest setting and in a vast clearing. This corner fire pit becomes the perfect spot to snuggle up as the evening winds down and stars come out. See the following photos for more backyard design ideas and inspiration.

Perfect for entertaining, this rustic, funky space — revamped by Lawn & Order's Sara Bendrick to reflect its owners' love of get-togethers centered around folk music — has an outdoor kitchen made from reclaimed wood with a built-in grill as well as a bar with metal stools. A custom stage also made from reclaimed wood overlooks a grassy lawn and a lounge area.

Going Yard’s Chris Lambton leaned into curvaceous details to give this open backyard’s new play area a sense of contemporary cohesion, where a modern hammock nestles among trees and tall shrubs planted for shade. A round tile hopscotch court and an outdoor chalkboard, in turn, make this a great place for the whole family to relax.

Chris Lambton took this dazzling white, elevated deck and pergola to the next level by framing it with a stone border and ornamental plants. Breezy translucent curtains provide shade, making this outdoor dining area a comfortable place to enjoy a lovely meal.

A sprawling two-level cedar deck and brick patio anchored by an outdoor fireplace and pergola provide ample space for al fresco dining and relaxing with friends or family. To soften all the hardscape, Chris Lambton and crew pushed back the wooded area to make room for a raised bed filled with perennials for year-round appeal and blooming annuals for color.

Good Bones’s Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E Laine squeezed every last bit of functionality from this itty-bitty yard by creating a cozy raised deck—complete with a bar, boho-chic outdoor area rug and plush upholstered furniture—and doubling down with a second seating area on the lawn. They then added cost-effective ‘architecture’ with a quartet of handsome, sand-filled ceramic pots to support swagged outdoor lights that create a magical ceiling after dark.

Who says a getaway has to literally involve getting away? Married to Real Estate cohost and designer Egypt Sherrod created the retreat of her dreams by constructing this charming shed in her Atlanta backyard.

When you’re creating backyard structures in the city, you build up, of course. Steve Watson and the Don't Sweat It team updated this Brooklyn brownstone backyard by installing a paver patio and arbor, replacing the fence, laying new sod, adding raised planter beds and building a combination garden shed and tree house.

Plants like iris, alliums, echinacea, roses and foxglove emphasize the cottage style of this colorful backyard garden. The flowering plants are primarily pink, white, yellow and blue — a soft palette that complements the natural shingles of the home. Flowering shrubs, roses, perennials, annuals and spring bulbs ensure that the garden is in bloom from March until late fall.

Create multiple areas for friends and family to mingle. Here, a lush, green lawn offers space to spread out and play lawn games or have a picnic. A gorgeous fire pit seating area provides room to relax and, just steps away, a spacious deck is an ideal spot to enjoy dinner alfresco.

This backyard boasts a staggered deck walkway that leads to a back door entrance to the home. Stone, gravel and evergreen landscaping are used throughout the yard, while a small pond features a unique floating stone patio complete with an outdoor dining table and chairs.

Garden walls of horizontal wood slats provide a screen and create a focal point in this garden space. A water feature offers soothing sounds.

Trees, shrubs and outdoor pillows bring color to this neutral modern patio. A forsythia boasts bright yellow flowers, a shrub with purple leaves bursts with jewel tones and orange pillows add more warm color.

Designers turned the sloping back of this home's yard into a terraced garden with a stream. The stream tumbles over several waterfalls, one right at patio's edge.

This large outdoor deck is painted a dark charcoal color that subtly separates it from the home’s charcoal exterior. Wrapping the beams of the pergola in climbing vines adds a botanical transition from the outdoor living area to the adjacent yard.

This backyard is one both adults and children can enjoy, with areas for play and relaxation incorporated into the design.

This backyard view blends traditional landscaping and a checkerboard paving pattern with a contemporary pool design.

This backyard's not big, but it creates an inviting mood with a deck, small patio, trim walking paths and even a wee garden. Off to one side sits a separate art studio.

The swing bed underneath the pergola provides views of this resort-style backyard. Annual planters offer seasonal color nearby while lighting around the yard ties the space together to create an at-home resort getaway.

Renovation Island phenoms Sarah and Bryan Baeumler celebrated the Colorado landscape — and optimized functionality in a sloped space — by drawing inspiration from Red Rocks Ampitheatre. They created concentric circles of fine and rougher gravel, then created both a fire pit and a spectacular arc of tiered bench seating with stacked, rectangular stone slabs. This all-weather installation will withstand the wear and tear of major precipitation, and it’s awfully easy on the eyes, no?

Matt Blashaw infused this once-humdrum, gently sloped backyard with Yard Crashers magic by creating a new focal point. The spacious lawn now culminates in a rock-bordered series of textural flowerbeds and a tiered water feature that eases the transition between upper beds and the grass, then culminates in a pond. The formerly-undifferentiated space is now a series of zones that flow into one another with organic elegance.

An outdoor fireplace creates a cozy place to gather after sunset, extending evening entertaining long into the night. This stacked stone fireplace surround also features a mounted TV perfect for game night under the stars.

This Atlanta, Georgia, backyard is fully equipped for outdoor entertaining with an outdoor gathering/grill area, a trampoline, fire pit and seating area for guests, landscaping and even a tumble mat for children.

Michel Smith Boyd and Anthony Elle of Luxe For Less leaned into this Colorado home’s tricky topography and terraced the lawn with retaining walls that double as seating, thanks to their choice of red block boulders. (The all-weather screen structure, in turn, doubles as a climbing wall by day). Decorative gravel frames the lawn, prevents erosion and features both evergreens and ornamental shrubs that will grow in to frame the sitting area.

This lovely backyard includes a hot tub with a surround built to match a custom-built pergola and bench seating that includes built-in planter boxes full of colorful hydrangeas.

A modern rock garden, rows of succulents and restful geometry create a cozy-meets-chic backyard retreat. An Ipe wood screen creates a focal point and draws the eye to a water feature. A shaded corner offers a great spot to relax.

Terraced tiers evoke a sense of peace, excitement and interest in this urban backyard.

A collection of succulents adds color and texture to this backyard that balances a variety of textures from pebbles to wood to a natural rock fountain.

Contemporary pendant lights hang under a covered patio in the dining area of this Mediterranean-style backyard. An outdoor grill station with a patterned tile backsplash sits to the right of the pool.

Outdoor art punctuates the landscaping along this privacy wall. An outdoor dining space continues the sleek, contemporary look.

Wood platforms situated in the natural rock bed create a comfortable walking path by this succulent garden. The small plants feature rich tones of green and purple, adding instant life to the space. Bamboo stalks shooting up against the wall add height to the area.

Leslie Davis and Lyndsay Lamb of Unsellable Houses established a less-is-more (read: luxurious-yet-budget-friendly) private patio just outside the owner’s suite in this Charleston, South Carolina home by building a minimalistic staircase leading to a simple concrete pad. They then suggested a room by building a two-tone contemporary pergola with wider, base posts and an upper structure with a dramatic ebony stain. A ‘ceiling’ of swagged string lights complete the whispery architecture and provide the perfect spot to enjoy an early-morning cup of coffee or intimate drinks at sunset.

In a colorful, versatile Indianapolis backyard that boasts a deck with dining and lounging areas as well as a lawn with raised beds for growing vegetables, herbs and flowers, Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E Laine demonstrate that you don’t need unlimited acreage to generate your own seasonal delicacies.

Well-crafted outdoor furniture is a welcome addition in any yard, of course, but Property Brother Drew Scott and his wife Linda Phan designed themselves a casual, quintessentially Californian lawn seating area that gets much funkier than that. Hanging basket chairs perched to flank a shapely occasional table and baskets of pillows and blankets encourage their guests to get cozy and make the most of the grass itself.

Why settle for just one plush sitting space inside your house when you can mirror it on a covered patio outdoors? Help! I Wrecked My House’s Jasmine Roth created the ultimate al fresco retreat for her football-loving husband and their friends with upper cabinets that house three televisions and a chic, pale sectional that would look right at home inside. The key to mirroring interior style in a space like this one is to invest in high-quality outdoor fabrics that won’t fade or degrade — and can stand up to enthusiastic rinses and spot-cleaning with the garden hose.

With electric cables overhead and next-door neighbors just on the other side of a low wall, this family backyard needed shade and privacy that a pergola couldn’t provide. Jasmine Roth built a handsome, substantial pavilion that turned the sitting area beneath it into an all-weather entertaining space, then equipped it with an oversized pendant and boho-chic furniture and accessories.

Pick and place a potting shed with an eye to the overall design of your yard so that it doesn’t sit out there like a lonely, disconnected outbuilding. The materials, design and placement of this shed tie it to the surrounding Asian-style garden.

Jonathan and Drew Scott turned this Santa Monica backyard’s erstwhile catch-all storage space into a sleek, modern accessory dwelling unit that doubles as an entertaining center, thanks to a new, collapsible window over the kitchen sink that serves a mini-bar on the patio. Along the 400-square-foot space’s other side, they replaced the garage door with a collapsible window wall that dissolves the barrier between the yard and the new satellite living room.

Hydrate your space without sinking your budget by taking a page from the outdoor lounge Brian Kleinschmidt created at this North Carolina property for 100 Day Hotel Challenge. Stock tanks like these can be integrated without excavation, and are cost-effective enough that you can splurge on more than one if you don’t feel like sharing.

A backyard pond adds a peaceful focal point while supporting a small, balanced ecosystem. Use a mix of aquatic plants, like water lilies for shade and taller plants for height and structure, to create depth and help control algae. Surround the edges with layered greenery, flowers and natural stone or wood for a soft, organic look. Keep the water healthy with partial sunlight, gentle circulation and a balanced number of fish.

Jonathan and Drew Scott turned a parched backyard into a lush outdoor oasis that culminates in this sculptural installation, a split-level fountain that sends water cascading gently down its standing stones’ faces and creates the sound of a babbling brook. Requiring minimal space, drainage and maintenance, this calming feature is perfect for a homeowner looking to dip their toe in aquatic accessories.

Entertaining in the backyard is a favorite pastime of family and friends. A patio can easily be adapted for an outdoor eating area by adding a grill, table and chairs.

A winding backyard path is the perfect way to explore the many different areas of the yard. The path can go from the house, past a dining table, to a shed and around to a play area, all surrounded by plantings.

Inside Out’s Carmine Sabatella and Mike Pyle squeezed every inch of functionality out of this backyard by creating a durable mini-lawn beside the dining patio's concrete pad and path to define the playhouse area. They defined the dining and entertaining space, in turn, by topping the outdoor fireplace with a pizza oven.

Wood decking is a way to make a small backyard space warm and inviting. It creates a sophisticated look for an outdoor living and dining area right outside the home.

No porch roof, pergola or particularly large trees from which to suspend a structure like this one? No problem. Make like Matt Blashaw and create a sturdy, reinforced pyramid. Its eye-catching architecture is a worthy addition to the yard in its own right, and its massive, curtained and upholstered platform is the perfect perch from which to while away the afternoon.

Fire pits create a wonderful focal point for an outdoor gathering space and add warmth to backyard gatherings on cool evenings.

In a sloped and largely sun-drenched yard like this one, a hillside covered with grass would guzzle up water and erode into mud in no time. Matt Blashaw made the most of each portion of the space by building an outdoor kitchen on the exposed upper balcony, creating a container-plant-framed sitting area on its transitional lower deck, then reserving the intimate, shade-dappled lowest level for loungers who want the feel of grass between their toes.

Moss gardens mean even shade is no deterrent to green. Moss makes a beautiful border in this Japanese garden and requires no mowing.