Outdoor Living

The Most Common Mistakes Nashville Homeowners Make Planning an Outdoor Project

Prestige Landscape · September 16, 2026 · 9 min read

After 15 years of designing and building outdoor spaces across Middle Tennessee, the projects that end in regret almost always trace back to decisions made before construction started. Not during. Before.

The mistakes are not about picking the wrong tile color or a finish they stop liking. They are structural planning decisions that affect how the space lives, how long it holds up, and whether the finished project matches what was in their head when they started. These are the ones we see most often.

Building a Patio That Is Too Small

This is the single most common regret we hear from homeowners who have done a previous project elsewhere. The patio looked generous when it was an empty slab. The moment furniture went out, it felt crowded. A table for six with chairs pulled out, a grill station, and a clear path between them takes more square footage than most people picture at the planning stage.

In Middle Tennessee where families use their outdoor spaces from March through November, a patio that seats eight comfortably with room to move needs at least 300 to 400 square feet as a baseline. Add an outdoor kitchen, a fire feature, and a separate seating area and the functional patio area grows considerably from there.

The fix: Before approving your patio dimensions, put tape or chalk on your existing lawn in the actual footprint. Walk into it as if there is furniture there. Pull out chairs from an imaginary table. See if a person can pass behind those chairs to reach the kitchen. If it feels tight empty, it will feel tighter furnished.

Ignoring Drainage Until It Becomes a Problem

Tennessee gets significant rainfall and Middle Tennessee's clay-heavy soil holds water rather than absorbing it. A patio installed without proper grading and drainage management will collect water at its edges, push moisture toward the home's foundation, and create soft spots in the adjacent lawn that stay wet long after a storm.

Drainage is the part of an outdoor project nobody wants to pay for because you cannot see it when the project is done. But it is what determines whether the rest of the investment holds up over time. A patio that settles unevenly because water is pooling beneath it is far more expensive to fix than it would have been to address at the design stage.

The fix: Ask any contractor you are considering how they are handling drainage as part of the design — not as an add-on. If drainage is not part of the conversation from the beginning, that tells you something about how the project will be managed.

Designing the Patio Without Thinking About the Future

Many families build a patio knowing they eventually want an outdoor kitchen, a pergola, or a fire feature — and then design the patio without accounting for any of those things. The result is a project that has to be partially redone to add the next element, or a finished space that can never quite fit what was always intended.

Running a gas line to where a future grill station will go costs almost nothing when the ground is already open during patio installation. Adding it later means cutting into finished hardscape. The same applies to electrical conduit for lighting, structural footings for a future pergola, and grade adjustments needed for a fire feature.

The fix: Tell your designer what you are thinking about for phases two and three, even if you are not ready to build them yet. A good design team will rough in what they can so future additions are clean rather than retrofitted. We cover how to think through this in our guide to planning a phased landscape investment in Nashville.

Choosing a Contractor Based on Price Alone

Three bids that are dramatically different from each other are not telling you that one contractor is being generous and the others are overcharging. They are telling you that the scopes of work are different — and that you may not know exactly what you are getting from the lowest bid until the project is underway and the gaps start showing up.

The details that get cut in a low bid are almost always invisible at the contract stage: base preparation depth, quality of bedding material under pavers, whether drainage is addressed properly, the thickness of a concrete pour, the grade of stone or paver material specified. These decisions determine how the project looks and performs five years from now.

The fix: Ask each contractor to itemize what they are including in their base preparation, what materials are specified, and how drainage will be handled. Ask to see completed projects from the last 12 months and to speak with those clients. A firm confident in its work will have no hesitation with either request. You can verify contractor licenses in Tennessee at verify.tn.gov.

Forgetting About Shade

Tennessee summers run hot. A patio with no shade structure is a patio that does not get used between noon and 6 PM from June through August. That is a significant portion of the outdoor calendar in a state where summer is long. Homeowners who build a beautiful patio without planning for shade often end up going back for a pergola or shade sail that does not integrate cleanly with the original design — a second project that costs more than it would have as part of the first one.

The fix: Map your sun exposure before finalizing the design. Where does afternoon shade fall in your backyard in July? If the answer is nowhere useful, shade structure should be part of the initial project budget, not an afterthought.

Underestimating the Role of Lighting

Landscape lighting is what makes a backyard space feel finished after dark. Without it, a project that looks beautiful in afternoon light disappears at 8 PM. With it, the space becomes somewhere people want to be in the evenings — which in Tennessee, after the summer heat breaks, is often the best time to be outside.

Running conduit for outdoor lighting during initial hardscape installation costs very little. Adding it after means cutting into finished work.

The fix: Include lighting in the initial design conversation even if the lighting itself is a later phase. At minimum, run conduit during construction so the option is there without additional hardscape disruption.

Starting Construction Without a Finished Design

It is tempting to start construction quickly, especially when you are excited about a project or trying to hit a seasonal deadline. But starting before the design is fully resolved means making decisions under time pressure during construction — when changing your mind costs real money and real time. The weeks spent on design upfront are almost always recovered in time and money during construction.

The fix: Do not sign a construction contract until the design is complete and you have walked through it enough times to feel confident in it. If a contractor wants to start immediately with a rough plan and figure out the rest as they go, that is worth pausing on.

What Good Planning Actually Looks Like

When Prestige takes on a new outdoor living project, the design phase is not a formality before the real work starts. It is where most of the real work happens. We think through drainage, sun exposure, how the space connects to the home, what a second phase might look like, and what materials will hold up in Tennessee's climate — before a single crew member steps on the property.

The result is a construction phase that moves quickly and cleanly because the decisions were made properly before it started. That is what allows us to complete a full outdoor living project in 6 to 10 weeks without surprises that push timelines or budgets.

If you are starting to plan an outdoor project, a design consultation with our team is the right starting point. We will walk your property, understand how you want to use the space, and work through a plan that gets the planning right before a crew ever shows up.