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Get This Look: A Luxury Deck Is All In The Details

Get Luxury Deck Design Ideas From This Deck's Attention To Detail

When it comes to creating a show-stopping deck space that will wow your friends and neighbors, the details make all the difference.

Beyond just the deck boards and railing, a deck gets that polished, finished look with a combination of details: trim boards (like fascia and risers), post caps, classy lighting, underdeck drainage, and polished column wraps. Let's take a look at one undeniably luxurious deck, breaking down the details that you can recreate (or expand on) in your deck.

A polished, finished luxury deck with brilliant lighting
A beautiful rounded staircase landing made of deck boards and recessed lights
A polished under deck area with a drainage system, under deck ceiling, and beautiful outdoor furniture

The Look: Luxury Deck Details With Trex Lighting

A luxury deck with individual products that make up the look tagged

Follow each tag to the numbered headings below to learn more about each piece of this look.

How To Get This Look

This deck builds on a simple color palette: crisp white and earthy brown. What makes that simple two-tone color scheme so effective, though, is that it consistently carries throughout all of the deck's details, from decking to railing to lighting to every piece of trim and finish in the space.

White makes a great accent color for decks, with a brightness and crispness that makes a space feel light and open. You could contrast white with brown (like this deck), or with grays, tans, or even black elements. Here are all the distinct areas to keep in mind when creating your own luxury deck feel via white trim:

Decking

Trex Transcend Spiced Rum Deck Boards

The rich dark brown tone of Trex Transcend Spiced Rum decking

The baseline of this deck is a dark brown deck board from Trex's top-quality decking line, Trex Transcend. The color is called Spiced Rum, and it's a rich, subtle blend of light browns and dark browns with a pretty traditional wood-grain texture that you can see close-up below:

A close-up look at the texture and color of Trex Transcend Spiced Rum decking

Spiced Rum decking works great here for two reasons:

First, the really subtle blend of multiple brown tones gives the deck some depth of color, when the classic white-brown contrast could feel too stark and simple with a more monochromatic deck board.

Trex Transcend Deck Boards make up a deck surface and a set of stair treads

Second, the rich texture of the Trex Transcend board brings the deck to life, providing a textural contrast to the smooth surfaces of the railing. Trex Transcend deck boards have raised ridges and grooves that you can see and feel - and they look especially amazing with a great lighting setup that plays in and around those ridges, as you can see below:

A circular deck stair landing made up of Trex Transcend Spiced Rum decking
Shop Trex Transcend Decking

Trim

Trex Woodgrain White Fascia Boards

This deck could have used trim to match the deck boards - after all, Trex does offer Transcend Fascia Boards in the same exact Spiced Rum finish. But the designer of this deck chose instead to use Trex's Woodgrain White fascia boards, creating two big wins: brightening up the space and causing the dark brown decking to "pop" against the white trim setting.

Like Trex Transcend, the Woodgrain White trim also features a natural wood graining that you can see and feel. It's got the very popular look of wood that's been painted white - but with no repainting or touching up ever required. Here's a closer look at Woodgrain White trim on a different deck:

Trex Woodgrain White Fascia Boards creating a finished look on a deck

When it comes to a luxury look, the details are king. For the most polished look possible, you can also use Fascia Corner and Seam Guard for Trex by Fascia Guard, a thin aluminum trim piece that covers the seams between fascia boards, whether on corners or straight seams. You can see them in action below:

Trex Woodgrain White Fascia Boards on the corner of a new deck, using fascia guard trim pieces to cover over the seams for a polished finish
Shop Trex White Fascia

Trex Woodgrain White Riser Boards

Extending the white trim look to the staircase is a key to this deck's polished look. Trex offers stair riser boards made of the same composite material and with the same wood-grain finish as the fascia boards:

White Trex riser boards creating a brilliant contrast next to dark brown stair tread boards

The riser boards are 8 inches wide compared to the 12-inch fascia boards, making it easier to fit into the rise of your deck's stairs. It's common to use traditional deck boards as stair treads, like this deck does. That allows you to tie the color of your deck surface to your staircase.

Shop Trex White Risers

Railing

Trex Transcend Composite Railing

The railing continues the brown-and-white color combo by turning to the king of railing color options: Trex Transcend Composite Railing.

Trex Transcend railing glinting in the sun

Like Trex Transcend decking, Transcend railing is the brand's top option among its composite railing offerings. What really makes Trex Transcend railing special is that the components come in up to six different color options that pair beautifully with every deck board in the Transcend decking collection.

Trex Transcend deck railing with brown rails and white posts

Composite railing has the traditional look and feel of wood, but like composite decking, it takes away the heavy maintenance requirements of traditional stained or painted wood. The smooth, capped surfaces of the composite rails and post sleeves are easy to clean and hold their color for years to come.

Trex Transcend Composite Railing with a stair section next to a level section
Shop Trex Transcend Railing

Lighting

A polished, finished luxury deck with brilliant lighting

Now we've set the foundation for this deck. But what really sets it apart is the brilliant addition of a top-to-bottom lighting plan. The good news? It's much easier than you'd think to create one just like it!

Trex Flat Top Low Voltage Post Cap Light

Deck stairs using Trex Transcend composite railing

Topping every post in the Trex Transcend railing is a specially-designed post cap with lighting built in. During the day, the post caps are merely accent pieces that give the railing a finished look. But underneath each cap are subtle, downward-facing lights:

Trex Transcend's composite post sleeve and composite railing

The post cap lights run on low voltage electricity that's incredibly easy to wire - it's about as hard as setting up your Christmas lights. Plug a transformer into any wall outlet, then wire your lights from that transformer. Trex's plug and play wiring (shown below) makes it as easy as running the wire inside your railing and plugging the cap in:

The easy wiring of a Trex low voltage lighted post cap

Fitting with the Trex Transcend theme of maximum color options, you can also get these post caps in other shades. This Vintage Lantern lighted post cap, for example, would match with the rails used on this deck, rather than the white posts.

A Trex Transcend lighted post cap in Vintage Lantern color
Shop Trex Post Cap Lights

Trex Recessed Low Voltage LED Dot Light

It's likely that the first thing you noticed when you saw this deck were the bright spotlights embedded in each stair. This deck does an amazing job of incorporating stair lighting that creates safe traffic paths while also making the deck look like the ornate stage of a theater production or a rock show.

Beautiful luxury deck stairs lit up by recessed stair lights

This incredible look is created by the diminutive light below: a small "dot" light that fits snugly into stair riser boards but creates a brilliant spectacle at night.

A Trex recessed light, including the easy plug and play wiring lead

These lights are almost as easy to install as the post caps. They run off of the same simple transformer with the same plug and play wiring. The only added step is cutting a hole into your riser boards, then fitting the light into place. This Forstner bit makes it easy to cut a perfectly-sized hole.

Shop Trex Stair Lights

Under Deck Details

This home effectively doubles its deck space by polishing the space underneath the deck into a sophisticated outdoor living room. Here's how to do it:

A beautiful under-deck area with gorgeous under-deck ceiling creating an outdoor living room

Trex RainEscape Deck Drainage System

Because deck boards need space between them, rainwater flows freely down to the space under your deck. But installing a deck drainage system allows you to keep that space dry and usable.

The Trex RainEscape deck drainage system is a really effective way to keep your underdeck area dry. The one catch is that it has to be installed before your deck boards, so it has to be part of your deck design from the very beginning.

(If you're looking to add underdeck drainage to your existing deck without removing your deck boards, check out either ZipUP UnderDeck or UpSide Deck Ceiling by Color Guard.)

The RainEscape system combines downspouts with long, waterproof troughs that you roll out between your joists:

A Trex RainEscape Down Spout, shown in tan
A Trex RainEscape Trough, rolled up and shown in tan

Here's a look at RainEscape being installed:

A man installs Trex RainEscape troughts between deck joists
A deck with Trex RainEscape installed under the deck boards

The result is a series of waterproof channels that funnel rainwater into the downspouts and then down into the gutter system of your choice. You can then cover over the RainEscape system with any sort of tongue and groove planks or underdeck ceiling to get the polished, finished look below:

A beautiful under-deck area with gorgeous under-deck ceiling creating an outdoor living room
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Soffit Light For Trex RainEscape

The great part about Trex RainEscape is that it keeps the space under your deck joists so dry that you can even run wiring safely through it. That allows you to intall recessed lights into your deck ceiling.

A Trex recessed soffit light and the easy wiring that comes with it

Trex's recessed RainEscape Soffit Lights are designed specifically to install into a deck ceiling, shining light downwards to create a cozy, welcoming underdeck area.

A two-level deck with a smooth under deck ceiling creating a finished space on the lower level
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Column Wraps

The final piece of this underdeck space is a clean, white finish for the deck posts. Rather than plain wood posts, this deck creates classy white columns that don't just hold up the deck - they're an accent piece of the underdeck area, carrying the bright white color scheme to its full effect.

There are two different ways you could accomplish this look, depending on your space.

First, and easiest, are post wraps. As the title implies, they come in four pieces that wrap around an existing post, snapping together and giving the post a polished, finished look:

A four-piece column wrap snapping in place around a wood post
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The other option is to use an aluminum column that's weight-bearing, meaning it can support the weight above it. This is a great option for front porches, or if you want to add another column to your space.

Below, you can see an AFCO aluminum column, built to sustain a load all by itself without a wooden pillar inside it.

A load-bearing aluminum porch column, shown from the bottom
Shop Load-Bearing Columns

Inspired? See More

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Browse Trex RainEscape Photo Gallery


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