Landscape designer Miranda Brooks created a walled outdoor room of sculpted green for Carie Marron’s Southhampton home. Photo by Christopher Baker for Vogue.
With June but days away vacation time is on everyone’s mind. And with rising temperatures the cooling physical and visceral qualities of water are casting their spell over us with the promise of relaxation and rejuvenation. For those of us fortunate to possess our very own private water escape in the form of a swimming pool, a vacation from life’s daily stresses is but a few steps away on any given day, one’s own piece of H2O heaven. To follow are an array stylistic representations of swimming pools from around the world. It is my hope that you may all experience water’s alchemical benefits throughout the coming summer near and far.
David Hicks’s Oxfordshire country house. Photography by Dana Hyde for David Hicks: My Kind of Garden.
An expansive pool is set into the bucolic setting of Stephen Sills Bedford property, punctuated by classical columns at one end. Photo by François Halard for Town & Country.
High hedges, sculpted with dramatically sloping sides, encircle a pool at a venerable Hamptons estate. Minimalist chaise longues and tables, selected by interior designer Mariette Himes Gomez, echo the clean-lined plantings. Photo by Scott Frances.
The bucolic setting of Charlotte Moss’s Hamtons home. Photo via Elle Decor.
The stone-edged pool at decorator Elissa Cullman’s Connecticut residence, Cedar Lodge Farm, resembles a natural pond set into the rolling lawn. Photo by Eric Piasecki.
Captivated by Nantucket’s peacefulness, a California couple traded Beverly Hills for the Massachusetts island. Across the broad lawn from their main house is an infinity pool that stretches out amid wild roses, lilacs, and indigenous grasses and looks out over 300 acres of wilderness. Photo by David O. Marlow.
A refined sensibility and barefoot ease define a Hamptons home with interiors by Timothy Haynes and Kevin Roberts. Photo by Simon Upton.
The pool at Scott Currie’s Southampton retreat. Photo by Roger Davies.
The pool at Ralph Lauren’s Montauk beach house is a natural extension of the landscape. Photo by Pieter Estersohn for Elle Decor.
Hollywood glamour of a bygone era lives on at La Quinta, the one-time villa of Diandra and Michael Douglas in Montecito, California. Photo by Lisa Romerein.
At Villa Palagio, Sting and Trudie Styler’s farm in Tuscany, the pool, installed by a previous owner, overlooks the Valdarno Superiore valley. Photo by Giancarlo Gardin.
An loggia decorated with azeulo tiles surrounds the pool at Quinta Patiño in Portugal. Photo from PANTALEON y las decoradoras website.
The poolside patio of Anne-Marie Midy’s Mexican hacienda is lit with copper lanterns. The hanging tin star lights are a traditional design. Photo by François Halard.
Turquoise waters compliment the red ocher of a villa designed by Studio Peregalli in Mallorca, Spain. Photo from French AD, July/August 2012.
For an estate in Mallorca the pool was sited at the edge of a bluff to take in the views beyond. Photo by Tim Beddow for Architectural Digest.
For a Palladian-style villa in Las Vegas architect William Hablinski placed the pool away from the house in the tradition of a great Italian country house. Photo by Pieter Estersohn.
Terraced water features flow into the main pool of Las Tejas in Montecito in the style of the formal gardens at Villa Lante. Photo by Lisa Romerein.
At a Los Angeles home by architect Kevin A. Clark and designer Madeline Stuart, the infinity-edge pool, tiled and framed with flagstone, is outfitted with teak furniture by Michael Taylor Designs. Photo by Simon Upton.
A large dark bottom pool in the style of a reflecting pond for a neoclassical-style villa in New Dehli with interiors by Jean-Louis Deniot. Photo by Richard Powers.
Sparkling emerald waters enhance the lush landscaping at Richard Shapiro’s Los Angeles Mediterranean-inspired home. Photo by Lisa Romerein for C Magazine.
American artist Kris Ruhs created the exuberant tile pattern for this courtyard pool at the Marrakech residence of Franca Sozzani, the editor in chief of Vogue Italia. Photo by Ivan Terestchenko for Spanish Architectural Digest.
The courtyard at the home of James Jordan in Merida, Mexico, the New York-based vice chairman of the World Monuments Fund. Photo by Paul Costello.
Studio Peregalli created a private paradise for author Umberto’s Pasti in Tangier. Photo by David Oliver.
Inspired by an ancient fortress on a dramatic cliffside property in Provence’s Luberon region, French decorator Michel Biehn installed a rustic, stone-edged pool embellished with ornamental urns at each corner. Photo by Bruno Suet.
The swimming pool at Giancarlo Giammetti’s villa in Tuscany. Photo by Isidoro Genovese.
Ancient stone walls surround the swimming pool at Villa Cetinale, Tuscany. Photo by Oberto Gili.
An infinity-edge pool on the property of Simone de Looze’s Tuscan retreat. Photography by Nicolas Matheus for German AD.
At the 15th-century Tuscan villa of fashion scion Leonardo Ferragamo, the circular pool dates from 1950, and the boxwood hedges echo the contours of the wall beyond. A boldly striped fabric covers a set of iron chairs and an awning, all designed by Francesca Garagnani and Carlo Ludovico Poccianti of Archflorence. Photo by Pieter Estersohn.
Positioned to take in sweeping views of mountains and fields, the pool of a country house in Italy is framed by brick arranged in a classic basket-weave pattern. Photo by Andrea Ferarri.
Architect Robert Brannen’s pool is nestled below the main stone farmhouse in Tuscany , which runs some adjacent to some ruins. Photo from Architectural Digest, September 2002.
At a home in Napa, an infinity pool at the garden’s north end overlooks the valley. Inset stone pavers turn the lawn into an artful grid, a design by Blasen Landscape Architecture. Photo by Matthew Millman.
At an estate once owned by Rudolf Nureyev on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, a curvaceous pool built into a rocky cliff is in perfect concord with the surrounding mountains and sea. Photo by Ivan Terestchenko for Architectural Digest.
Brazilian-granite coping borders the pool at Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s Beverly Hills, California, estate. Photo by Roger Davies.
An elegantly simple lap pool overlooking the Pacific set into the lawn of a Palladian-style villa designed by Michael S. Smith in Malibu. Photo by Simon Upton.
A simply elegant lap pool enhances avstreamlined oceanside showplace in Malibu designed by architectural designer Scott Mitchell Photo by Scott Frances.
A pool in Japan is positioned between a starkly minimalist home and the sea. Photo by : Katsuhisa Kida. From Kelly Klien’s Pools: Reflections.
Glass and stone pavilions frame the pool of designer Kelly Behun ‘s Southampton home built by Sawyer/Berson. Photo by William Waldron.
Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady’s pool terrace offers views out over Los Angeles, with the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Photo by Roger Davies.
The pool design for a modernist villa in Mallorca, Spain, extends the rectangular volumes of the main house. Photo by Marco de Valdivia. From Pools by Kelly Klein, 1992.
Juan Montoya based the design of his swimming pool for his retreat in the Hudson River Valley on a floor pattern in a Swedish palace. Photo by Tim Street-Porter.
Architect Manolo Mestre created a small pool at the edge of a hill in Valle de Brava, Mexico. Photo by Tim Street-Porter.
Designer Tino Zervudachi restored and furnished jet-setting investor Nat Rothschild’s house in Rio de Janeiro. On a terrace facing the sea, Zervudachi laid out what became the urbane centerpiece of the residence: a pool whose elaborate Op Art tile design echoes the wave pattern on the famous Rio promenades by Roberto Burle Marx. Photo by Michael Calderwood.
One & Only Reethi Rah North Male Atoll, Malidives, is a tropical paradise set on a private island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Photo via One & Only.
