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.
The Look: Luxury Deck Details With Trex Lighting
Follow each tag to the numbered headings below to learn more about each piece of this look.
- #1: Trex Transcend Spiced Rum Deck Boards
- #2: Trex Woodgrain White Trim
- #3: Trex Transcend Composite Railing
- #4: Luxury Deck Lighting
- #5: Deck Drainage & Under Deck Accents
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 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:
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.
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:
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:
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 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:
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 RisersRailing
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 LightsUnder 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:
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:
Here's a look at RainEscape being installed:
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Inspired? See More
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