Creating your perfect outdoor oasis

Want to create the perfect outdoor oasis at home? Consider these tips:

• Determine how you want to use your space — for cooking, relaxing, dining — and how you can realistically accommodate those activities within your space and budget.

• Use the same principles of design that you would to create an indoor room, such as texture, color, proportion, form and focal point.

• Arrange furniture to create conversation nooks.

• Add style and ambience to the setting with a firepit or fireplace, decorative lighting, sound system, water features and landscaping.

• Have a limited budget? A wood pergola wrapped in strings of lights is an inexpensive way to define an outdoor room.

• Try bright, fun colors for furniture cushions and pillows.