H O M E A N D R E A L E S TAT E Since 1988, Huntington Pools Inc. has designed and built custom swimming pools, spas and outdoor living spaces for homes in Los Angeles.
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Create the ultimate staycation with Huntington Pools’ designs
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ince the pandemic, swimming pools have become the recreation of choice. Many people have been investing in their homes and transforming their backyards into relaxing escapes with the addition of swimming pools. Since 1988, Huntington Pools Inc. has designed and built custom swimming pools, spas and outdoor living spaces for homes in Los Angeles, including Pasadena, San Marino and La Cañada Flintridge. Using a combination of engineering, form and fit, they create outdoor living areas that complement a home’s overall landscape and architecture. When designing a pool for a client, founder and President Jeff Lokker says that there are two important factors. “First is the architecture of the house, which is the driving force behind a pool design,” Lokker says. “Second is the client and their intended use for the pool. Are they an older couple looking to exercise or a young family with kids? These are important details that help us create the ideal swimming pool to match each client’s lifestyle and needs.” According to Lokker, it’s important to design a swimming pool to complement the home, particularly if the house features a significant architectural style. “It all starts with the house,” Lokker says. “When we go to a property to interview a client, if they live in an early 20th century Spanishstyle home, we tend to gravitate toward that style of pool, which has
elements such as raised walls with water features that feed back into the pool and hand-painted Spanish tiles that are appropriate to the period. If it’s a midcentury modern house, a pool design is going to be sleeker and more geometric. The materials we use for midcentury modern houses tend to be more monochromatic with white plaster and simpler concrete decking.” Lokker mostly designs pools for Spanish, midcentury modern, contemporary and Craftsman homes. Each type of home calls for a variety of details and materials for pool designs. “There is a large market of these types of homes in the areas we service, and we are lucky to get to work with all of these architecture styles,” Lokker says. “If we’re working with a contemporary house on a hillside, we’ll often design an infinity edge or overflow pool. We’ve worked on Greene and Greene Craftsman houses, and those pools tend to be more free form but also rectilinear. We also use a lot of brick with Craftsman-style pools, along with darker and earth tone colors in our decks, plaster and finishes.” Aside from incorporating more interesting and exotic finish materials, such as hand-painted tiles into pools, Lokker says that shallower pools have also become more popular. “Pools used to be 8 or 9 feet deep,” Lokker says. “And now more people are OK with that being in the 5- to 6-foot range. Cocktail pools continued on page 20
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By Kamala Kirk
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