Designing a pool for a compact West Hollywood lot
The first question on a West Hollywood project is rarely how big the pool can be. It is how the pool, the deck, the spa, and the rest of the outdoor room can coexist in a footprint that may be only a few hundred square feet. We treat the whole courtyard as the design, not just the water. Where the pool sits, how wide a walkway you keep, whether a raised spa doubles as a bench or a privacy screen, all of it gets resolved on paper before we commit.
Small does not mean compromised. A plunge pool four feet wider than a hot tub can transform a courtyard, and a clean rectangle with a sun shelf and a spillover spa delivers most of what a far larger pool would, on a fraction of the land. We size the pool to leave the deck and the planting room a yard this size needs to feel livable rather than crowded.
Designing to the constraint also means designing to the sightlines. In a compact home the pool is often visible from the kitchen, the living room, and the bedrooms above, so it has to look intentional from every one of those angles. We model the view from inside the house, not just the plan from above, because that interior view is the one you live with every day.