5 Tips + 9 Ideas for Decorating an Open Balcony

We are happy to work on balconies, redesigning them into offices and children's rooms, but we pay little attention to open balconies.

If your balcony or loggia is unglazed and you want to make this space cozy at least during summer, read our tips on decoration and keep the ideas.

Refer to the interior style of the room adjacent to the balcony

It is important to maintain a consistent color palette, textures, and patterns in any room’s design—even if it is temporary.

However, we suggest narrowing the color palette, textures, and patterns for an open balcony to those already present in the adjacent room so that the summer space harmoniously continues its design.

How to Apply in Practice?

The apartment of designer Olga Minullina is designed in a monochrome palette, and black predominates in the bedroom, which can be accessed from the balcony.

Almost black was also made of the balcony: the balcony railings and legs of outdoor furniture were painted in this color, black planters and dishes were chosen.

Pay attention to the flowers: the shades of petals echo the color scheme of the bed pillows.

Play with the View from the Balcony

It is not always that the view from the apartment or house is as good as one might like, but even in the facade of a neighboring high-rise building, one can notice interesting details and accentuate them with a few elements of new furnishings.

How to Apply in Practice?

To visually connect this balcony with the building opposite, terracotta pots for plants were placed: Swedish blogger and decor expert Emma Malin selected them to match the external finish of the building.

Another “echo” is metal pots: they resonate with the gray base.

Finally, chairs and a table in graphite color support the dark color of the vertical pipes.

Create the Setting with Contrasts

They don’t have to be strong or sharp. Keep in mind the rule: bright items will beautifully unfold against a calmer background, and dark tones are well supported by light ones—and vice versa.

Remember how the color wheel of Itten works: classical color schemes will help in choosing expressive combinations of shades.

How to Apply in Practice?

Inside the balcony partition in a Kiev studio project by Viktoria Vitkova is white, so for a beautiful contrast, dark furniture was chosen.

As a result, the apartment layout clearly unfolds in depth.

Choose Outdoor Furniture and Water-Repellent Fabrics

To avoid having to carry chairs and cushions in and out of the balcony all summer, trying to protect them from bad weather, choose outdoor zone furniture. The most popular materials for chairs, stools, loungers, and tables are rattan, acacia, artificial wicker, treated with special impregnations, and of course metal.

As for water-repellent fabrics, modern compositions make them tactilely almost indistinguishable from indoor ones. Cushions, throws, and soft seating made of outdoor fabrics are pleasant to touch and won’t get soaked in the rain, while colors won’t fade in the sun.

Also, they’re not scary to get dirty: stains from spilled sauce, juice, or wine during a home barbecue can easily be wiped off with a damp cloth.

How to Apply in Practice?

In the balcony of a St. Petersburg flat, designers from the studio “Architecture of Interiors” assembled a minimalist set of outdoor woven chairs and an IKEA table. For ambiance — hanging planters with colorful annuals.

Don’t Forget About Plants

Caring for a mini-garden or container garden requires effort and inspiration. What if you have neither? Choose the most low-maintenance plants.

If your balcony is on a sunny side, plant lavender, mint, thyme, petunia, or pelargonium. In a shaded area? Choose begonia.

Design: Olga Sedova and Prokhor Mashukov, ONLY design

How to Apply in Practice?

If you plan to keep the balcony green all year round, look into larch, lupine, thuja, and kizilnik. These plants can easily survive winter in containers in our latitudes.

Another option for a year-round, low-maintenance shrub for the balcony is juniper.

A few identical planters with this plant maintained a calm design and extended layout of the studio’s balcony designed by bureau 2B.group.

How Else to Decorate an Open Balcony: + 9 IdeasHow to Make the Space of an Open Balcony More Private? A sofa or sofa, turned away from the street, will help. Hang planters with plants on the railings.

If not everything you wanted to include in the design was found in outdoor collections, it’s important that basic items are outdoors: chairs, table, flower vases. Cushions and throws can be taken out when it’s warm, like in the apartment designed by Olga Legoshina.

If the area is not too noisy and it’s relatively dark at night, why not set up a mini-observatory on the balcony? We got the idea from a Moscow apartment project designed by Irina Krascheninnikova.

Light woven furniture is a universal option for any open balcony.

Complete the balcony surrounded by autumn trees with a vase of cut branches — at least it’s unusual.

If the balcony is spacious and the owners are experienced, consider buying an electric grill. No food smells in the house!

Symmetry is a stylish and easy-to-implement way of arranging items. “Mirror” the chairs and decor relative to the coffee table, as in the Stockholm studio project — a stylish balcony is ready.

There are many solutions for creating a mini-garden or vegetable plot on an open balcony! We like the idea of combining several at once, for example, as seen in this Swedish balcony where there’s space for floor planters, wall-mounted ones, and shelf ladders.

Compact folding chairs and a side table will help if the balcony is very small, like in the M2project design.