If you are have a detached garage and it is connected to the house with a roof, or pergola you probably don’t think of it as anything except a utility; a pathway between the house and garage. When in fact it might make a great destination point.
Take a careful look at your space; determine what possibilities lay ahead with a little creative thought. For instance, how it connects to your landscaping can become a good space for a bench or plantings to enhance the area.
Stucco, wood siding or smooth plaster can all be great canvasses for art expression. If you have a budding artist in the family or neighborhood, consider letting them paint a design, mural or even just add some metal sculpture to one side of the breezeway.
Depending on how wide your breezeway is, you can use both sides of the space for art, think Trompe l’ oeil, or to fool the eye. Using a perspective drawing, you can add depth to the space, imagine sitting on a bench on one side of the breezeway and looking at a wall mural that shows a window with a view or a path to a favorite place in your travels, or somewhere you’d like to be. You could have a field of flowers, mountain, sea or desert scape.
This technique is used in many places you may visit on a daily basis, and you only need to think of how you can use it in your home. The sides of garages tend to be fairly boring spaces, and if your view out of a kitchen or bedroom window is just that, think of what you’d like to see and imagine it as a destination.
Breezeways that are narrow may not allow you to have seating, but they need not to be boring, you can get creative with paint. Think geometric shapes and colors, or stripes, bold or subtile, vertical or horizontal, even a wide zig zag with subtile color variation would be more interesting than plain beige.
By making your breezeway a destination point, it can give your existing landscape a boost too. By incorporating your landscape design into your home structure, including your breezeway, you create a connection that is seamless and cohesive. Choose colors from your landscape to enhance your breezeway.
The space between a home and a garage that isn’t covered, creating a breezeway, can still be more interesting, by employing some of these ideas. Add a more decorative path, with paving stones and plantings and even seating. In the future, you can add a covered structure to connect the two spaces.
This space may be something you have not given any thought to before, but it might be a lost opportunity too. Take a look at restaurants, theaters, bookstores for inspiration and imagine something similar to perk up your otherwise untapped space.