Exploring Possibilities in Porcelain Pavers

Every great outdoor project starts with a problem to solve. For one family in the Southern sun, they were looking for a material that would be easy to maintain, not radiate heat, and be able to withstand the wear and tear of a large family with young children and dogs.  

They found their answer in porcelain pavers.

The finished project includes a covered kitchen and entertaining patio, open-air pool deck, activity lawn, and a thoughtfully planted transitional landscape. It spans thousands of square feet and moves through distinctly different functional zones while maintaining a remarkable visual coherence from one end to the other.

The design elements reflect a fun and sophisticated family space highlighting contrasting textures, balanced by the serenity of the poolscape. 

GeoCeramica's Urban Pearle and Urban Smoke colorways anchor the entire palette. In the covered patio and kitchen spaces, the two tones alternate in a diagonal checkerboard pattern that brings energy and movement to the hardscape without introducing visual clutter. 

Moving out to the pool deck, it shifts into a four-diamond arrangement, creating a dynamic monochromatic pattern punctuated by carefully integrated strips of LEE Building Products artificial turf. The turf borders add texture and serve as the design's visual grammar, organizing the space and drawing the eye outward toward the MagnumStone retaining wall that wraps the activity area.

A 45-degree diagonal installation across a multi-thousand-square-foot site is unforgiving. From aerial views, the diagonal lines read perfectly true across every zone change, never breaking their rhythm regardless of material transitions.

"I’m extremely proud of the way the lines flow,” said Jason Patrick, who represents Liberty Stone, the American manufacturer of GeoCeramica. “It all looks fluid. It all looks intentional.”

The project won the Porcelain Paver Pavement – Residential category at the 2025 Hardscape North America Awards, a recognition that reflects the quality and aesthetics of the installation, and the creative problem-solving of the project. 

"You can't make 2,000 square feet look any better than this," Patrick said. "It's just done well."

Patrick also wants this award-winning project to serve as an example to the hardscaping community. 

"A lot of times in life, we get really comfortable with what we know. We're used to seeing pools with a certain aesthetic and we just assume that's what ours is going to be like. But 10 years ago, if you told me there would be artificial turf around a pool or a porcelain paver, I would have said you were crazy,” Patrick said. 

“I think, if nothing else, it just gives people the ability to ask, ‘What can we do here? What are the possibilities?’”