14 Perfect Swimming Pool Coping and Tile Ideas
Oh, the tile and coping that goes around the pool. It’s laughably ironic that all of these pool design behemoths are just so relentlessly completely out of sight in the overall scheme of backyard renovations. For real, no one’s just drooling over how the pool is shaped – Is it a peanut? A kidney? – or width, even possibly the wacky, completely out-of-sight water features. The tile and coping? They’re the cape-wearing, under-the-radar heroes of nice looks and, you know, getting stuff done. But these are just kind of the little things that no one’s noticing that make a pool go from epic puddle to official backyard paradise.
We’ve walked past more pools than we’d be willing to count at close range (a thankless job, but somebody’s gotta do it), and it’s always the totally thoughtful way these pieces are thrown around that creates the “meh” turning into the “holy guacamole, that’s great!” Choosing the proper coping and tile is never about what produces a neato well concealed look; it’s about getting down about how materials really do in the real world, how they feel when you wiggle your toes on them (um, important!), and how they get into a conversation with the rest of the elements of your outdoor space’s design narrative. It’s where the pragmatism of the day-to-day sort chooses to go straight for the unselfconscious, bare naked design magic.
Let the Water Inspire Your Palette
There’s this completely enchanting waltz light does on water, and you can promise us we’re only inviting you to bring that untroubled raw beauty as your main muse. Just look at this gorgeous infinity pool. That gentle, sneaky colour gradient in the water – from the sun-tanned ocean-blue, is-that-turquoise-or-is-it-my-pants? from surface to the softer, deeper blues – are a matter of the tile that the pool is constructed of and, surprise, the quantity of real light that it receives. And note how those little-little, quasi-wink-wink-nudge-nudge iridescent light blue steps that the pool is making are doing a rough approximation of the water’s serene, spotted light itself.
This nifty little trick of the trade has the absolutely most perfect, silky-smooth transition from pool side to its dirty (or maybe not-so-dirty) waters, effectively erasing any line between what we constructed and what Mother Nature found worthy of avoiding. It’s a lesson in how to maximize your tile choice and getting it to create a “depth, a clarity of water, rather than, shudder, charging headlong at it like some bully brother. In our humble but very experienced judgment, this step not only has the pool screaming “come on in, the water’s fine!” but also ensures that it gets along swimmingly with the surrounding neighborhood.
Let the Coping Define the Lines
Where tiles are otherwise unruly bringing water to life, it is the coping that plays the role of the brusque, though necessary, landlord, gripping tight and defining the pool from its building context. Consider the border of the painting you can probably not even afford to buy. This is the pleasant vignette: the blaringly, nearly-on-bloking light-colored coping boldly meets unselfconsciously direct, if unmistakably tasteful, the outrageous green lawn and the darker hue of ground cover. This deliberately self-aware, near-on-blocking use of tidy, modernist coping material – no doubt some over-blighted natural stone or ginormous slab of porcelain – yells “modern age sense of design!” at a deafening decibel.
It replicates the pool’s exact geometry with painstaking care, vaunting its rectangle predominance and the resulting spa (because every hot tub has to have a resulting pool). This very, almost-OCD-level obsessiveness is enough to transform a climate of order and highbrow pretentiousness into a claustrophobic backyard. We see this strategy zanily so under tight constraints because it crank the volume visually on the pool to eleven without ever needing to cut a thing for a neat, uncluttered area, essentially making those lines hold all poetical by themselves.
Go Seamless with Hidden Coping
For all of us who love a seamless visual flow, the hidden coping look is literally the Beyoncé of pool design – a total game-changer. This sneaky tactic, oftentimes just hanging out around infinity-edge pools like the one staring back at you, literally kills the line between the pool and the view it’s feigning to spill over into. The camouflage is beach hide-and-seek or is so perfectly camouflaged that it seems to disappear into thin air. It’s not only adding the infinity effect to the point where the water would seem to pour right into the ocean or other enormous landscape, but it’s also creating a very sleek and necessarily contemporary atmosphere.
It’s so much of an optical illusion, it’d be out on the Strip in Vegas, and making the room appear larger than life. The aesthetic is all about replicating pool water and the sheer breathtaking backstop the only stars of this game of optics, replicating the experience so immersive you’d likely end up forgetting where you are. It’s such a creation mere unprecedented for hotels with views so sweeping they’d have their own postcode.
Blend Tile with the Surroundings
Occasionally, the magic happens when your tile for the pool finds a warm spot to settle in and blend beautifully with the color and texture of the garden. This is the perfect visual sermon on exactly that premiss. A long way from the bland, monochromatic blue, the sweeping strokes of blue and green tile are working together in an alluring checkerboard that’s tastefully reproducing the dappled leaves and rock walkways so prevalent around the pool. This’s no haphazard “oh dear, I dropped the box of tiles” selection; it’s a highly deliberate design choice to look back at the natural, un-patterned splendor of the surroundings.
The country-finish coping, terra cotta and earth tone blissfully mismatched, is responsible for this sensation even more than the pool does feel like an even more natural extension of the out-doors – like the garden just kinda added a pool. We generally reserve this wise counsel for pools that nestle between lush, thickly vegetated gardens, so the whole atmosphere that’s so immaculate and tranquil, you’d be surprised if you could ever possibly even stand a chance at staying awake by the pool. It’s all about producing an entirely cohesive visual space.
READ MORE >> 10+ Small Pool Designs That Feel Like a Resort
Let the Architecture Guide You
The perfect pool design is no solitary wolf crying in the desert; it is a thoughtful insertion into the form syntax of the home. Here in this painting, on the other side, the sleek, near-surgery rectangular shapes of the pool and integrated spa are graciously mimicking the modern, sophisticated style of the house in the next yard. The enormous, light-colored coping tiles are barely whispering sweet nothings to the potentially light-colored exterior or patio surface, sliding stylishly and elegantly from in to out.
Even the black gloomy surface of the pool, some cranky gray plaster or some falsely stylish dark tile, is friends with the black window trim and house roofline. This brilliant recycling of architectural details produces an exterior space so sleek and streamlined, it nearly sucks champagne. For this type of design, always, always look to your initial house design style – modern minimalist, warm traditional, or cozy rustic – and have them inform your pool coping and tile choice for an appearance so streamlined, you’ll weep.
Chase the Coastal Feeling
There is a very good reason boardwalk-themed decor evokes such a instant sense of calmness and need to run away on a whim. This pool, friends and gentlemen and ladies, is practically the very embodiment of that old-school beachy vibe with its maddeningly considerate choice of material. Those pale blue tile mosaic everywhere within the pool are basically in your face shouting “ocean waters!” and those wavy, wave-like cutouts on the stairs just put the final touch of detail on the underwater illusion.
The decking, that sandy-beige cushy stuff, becomes familiar with that wood deck that circumnavigates it, which, I mean, is having a happy time mimicking those boardwalks you’d see by the ocean. Even the tastefully, if I might say so, positioned seashells are acting as blushing, winking little smirks. It’s this philosophical congruent sense of design where literally every single object is about telling one single, serene beautiful story. We just downright believe that, literally coloring by nature’s color and texture and coloring along the landscape itself, or appearance that you are trying to create, actually adds the entire ambiance of a pool area to a magic.
Highlight the Shape With Contrasting Tones
Contrast colors applied on coping and tile surrounding a pool is a very effective design tool for shouting out the shape of a pool. And here, so lovely in the photograph here, the graphic, near-taunting black coping is a joy to behold set against the more mellow blue of bathroom pool tile. That graphic, near-truculent contrast so commands your eye and leads it inward toward the smooth, curving line of the pool, actually creating a highlight to its flowing organics in its place.
Dark coping is a stabilizer as well, adding solidity and permanence – no one wants an unbalanced pool. It is also perfect for funky or curved pools, when the designer rightly wants to demonstrate their sculptural ability. The tension of contrast of light and dark is visually a three-dimensional one, raising the global level of beauty and avoiding the pool form from being lost in confusion.
Don’t Be Afraid of Pattern
Application of pattern to pool tile is one method of bringing a dynamic component of visual loveliness, and we will not be afraid to insert, character. This photo is showing off what a patterned waterline tile can do to take a previously lackluster light blue pool from “so-so” to “oh my, where did you get that?” That woven blue and white pattern isn’t simply introducing a splash of beauty; it’s creating a clean, near magnetic edge, thrusting the eye out and defining the pool’s very border. This warning is a kindness for breaking the soul-killer boredom of plain tile so that the pool isn’t too too drab or, worst-case, boring.
If you do have the guts to opt for patterned tiles, do us a kindness and think how their form and arrangement will contribute to the aesthetic of the big outdoors, that they will enhance, not overwhelm, the aesthetic. Pattern, male and female, is a ginormous big plus when it comes to character and content.
READ MORE >> 12 Above Ground Pool With Deck Ideas
Use Coping as a Transition Element
Coping is so beautiful that it would be an Oscar winner as level-bridging eye candy between pool and its nearby deck or yard. This photo is gorgeous, on the edge of poetry, a paean to perfection of coping as never failing long-term transition. The pale swooping coping is a glassy, nearly seductive slide along the rough pool edge to the open, welcoming natural wood decking. Color and texture are carefully selected to highlight both feel of the water as well as deck surface so the finished product is a work so smooth it could very well take home a beauty pageant trophy.
This modulation skillfully bypasses any clashing visual intrusiveness, producing instead a smooth, hospitable transition from patio and deck’s rough, rigid textures to the living areas outside their rough, rigid ones. By the deliberate selection, coping is finally able to make the apparent openness and continuity of the whole outdoor living area even more than that, instead of being glorified pool edge patrol.
Embrace Texture, But Gently
The use of texture in spa design adds a splash of long-overdue weight and personality, but must be done with a light, if not begrudging, touch so that it doesn’t overwhelm the space. In this lovely study here, the boulder wall is an impenetrable plane of sensation that’s privy to a good, but rough, conversation with the more refined planes of coping and tile. Range of color and range of stone’s rough, natural texture is preserved but formal, civic checkered tile rhythm of small checkered tiles of pool.
Silken, subtle coping is the intelligent, unemotional elder bridging the space between rough wall and tile pool. Subtle layering of surfaces is a visual cue and not a circus that leans on its axis, tastefully demonstrating how unrelated materials exist for the whole design to be the richer for it.
Use Tile as a Feature, Not Just a Finish
Pool tile never really has the problem of breaking out of its humble functional foundation to become an animate design element, infusing off-campus character into the room. This photo is a great case in point of how tile is not just installed as a mundane plane, but as a valid focal point. Hand-cut custom lettering “AQUA VISTA” elegantly integrated into coping and tile naturally draws eyes towards it, making a practical bare look of a pool into an individual, quasi-vanting statement.
Also, the tessellating tile employed at steps and waterline forms some uncovered bands which play an important role in the appearance of a pool.
It is a far better quality than bare finish. The inherently obvious use of tile does leave some room for imagination and subtlety requires some theme or even some so-called up-market branding. Designers can inject a spirit of one-off luxury and unavoidable singularity in the pool area by employing tile as design element other than raised covering.
Think About How the Tile Reflects Light
The way the pool tile behaves under light is all about color and mood cast upon the water – and yes, it makes that big of a difference. This photograph totally captures the complete dazzle of mirror finishes. Rainbow-hued, glinting mosaic tiles on the spa ledge are effectively partying, reflecting, refracting sunlight, and fashioning an eye-blinding, glinting kaleidoscope of color.
This impact not just give the pool a dynamic, lively splash; it also color the water of the main pool so that it is lighter and more pleasing to the eyes.
The main pool’s block blue tile, though, give the background color a working, simple look. When testing your design, also remember to consider sun orientation in relation to the pool and select tiles with finishes – iridescent, glossy, or matte – that give the desired effect in sunlight during the daytime because no one will be pleased to have a flat pool during the afternoon.
Mix Materials for a Layered Look
Purchasing a well-constructed pool will necessarily involve the subtle juxtaposition of differing materials. This photograph vividly captures the aphorism in the work of a welcoming combination of earthy warmth of wood deck and timeless beauty of stone coping and hard work of figured tile. Light coping stone is neat and tidy solid trim, with one coarsely rustic among the wood deck and fascinating aquatic world.
Directly below, water line-textured tile forms a transgressive visual texturing and do-it-yourself splash of playfulness that cries out “we know what we’re doing.” The intentional jolt of strongly differentiated materials adds depth and visual stimulation, effortlessly keeping the pool space from being as exciting as a tax return. The result is one densely textured and welcoming space that almost cries out “considerate design choices!“.
Go Dark for Drama
With dark hues stained on pool coping and tile, it will end up providing a dramatically eye-catching and near-spoopyly reflective appearance. As you can quite clearly see in this instance, dark, moody blue-black tiles make the pool water hypnotic, black water that boldly reflects the horizon landscape and sky.
This staging choice gives the pool a sense of depth and inexorable grace, more often than not causing the pool to feel less like the stereotypical backyard splashing pool and more like a ghastly natural pond or a fabulously decadent, softly serene body of water. The black coping helps as well in developing this interesting effect, forming a hard, delineating border that halos the reflective surface like a velvet drape. This approach is particularly appealing with modern or minimalist styles, where the goal is to create an impressive visual statement and a space so serene, you’ll likely reach nirvana.
Your Pool, Your Masterpiece!
Selecting the ideal coping and tile isn’t choosing material to be pretty; it’s choosing supremely informed design choices that breathtakingly place your pool in its surroundings, boldly express your personality, and energize its function. From allowing nature’s beauty of the water to contribute to your color palette to going really bold with the designs or wholeheartedly embracing huge-scale dramatic dark colors, all your decisions place a brush stroke on the larger canvas of your own personal backyard heaven.
The rules we’ve imposed quietly – replicating line work on buildings or deliberately getting textures in a spin like some dotty scientist, for instance – are just the tools by which to help you design a pool that’s not only where you splish and splash in water, but part and a lovely part of your home. What sort of work of art will you be creating?
