Several years ago, a new residential project opened in Costa Mesa, California that surprised the market. Like many areas of Southern California, land costs were soaring and forcing developers to consider building more densely.  As neighborhood design became tighter and taller, there was less opportunity for nice ground level private yards.

Unlike many projects in China where parking is often at the basement level, in California the cars require roads and private garage parking on the main floor.  This further eats the available site plan green space and often pushes living to the floors above the parking garage. Outdoor yards and gardens are quickly traded for small useless decks to achieve the necessary density.

The Southern California lifestyle is all about the indoor/outdoor living and a clever developer realized that if a great rooftop yard is included in a townhome development or even a small villa project, buyers will pay a higher price premium for it. It sounds obvious now and it wasn’t even a new idea. Bigger cities such as Los Angeles were already doing this. The key is that buyers who wanted to live the Southern California lifestyle could now have it in a higher density neighborhood.

Rooftop urban yards create a number of benefits:

1. The privacy of the yard is much better than the ground floor where neighbors often look directly into your gardens. Especially in denser and taller housing types.
2. There is much better access to fresh air and sunlight without the nearby neighbor shading your yard.
3. New opportunities for views are available adding further premiums to the pricing. Up in the air, city and water views open up.
4. New types of interior rooms can be created to use this new yard opportunity. How about a World Cup viewing party while barbequing outside?

Other developers were shocked at the higher price premiums this builder was getting in Costa Mesa from the addition of the upper-level yard spaces.  As you can imagine, other developers wanted a piece of this success and over the following years many projects tried this same strategy to attract buyers and get higher pricing. During a recent trip to California I toured a wide variety of three- and four-story townhomes, triplexes, duplexes, and single-family villas. Each one had a rooftop urban yard as a major selling point.

As you can imagine, some projects were more successful than others when they designed these spaces and I interviewed the sales team to hear what buyers were saying. I learned a few key tips for the design of these urban yard spaces on the rooftop.

1. This is not a typical deck! A deck is for standing or a single seat. A rooftop urban yard is for living on and moving around. The yard needs to be a large enough size to truly use and entertain guests.  The ability to furnish with tables and large seating is a must.  Room for a garden is even better.
2. Rooftop equipment is noisy and messy. Keep the equipment on the opposite side of the roof and preferably hidden completely behind the stairs or bonus rooms.
3. Be creative with the design of the outdoor living space. Consider a trellis overhead, a shading sail or awning, and even a full roof to make it a livable room. A little cover makes a big difference in feeling and usability.
4. Access must be from a real internal stair. No spiral steps or ladders. The location of the stairs is important. It should allow a nice sized and regular shaped space both inside and outside.
5. The rooftop yard is much more useful when paired with an interior bonus room with lots of light and sliding doors. The use of this bonus room is only limited by your imagination.
6. Enhance the rooftop yard with an outdoor kitchen/bbq or bar. Perfect for entertaining. A wall for media is great too.
7. Extend the use of the yard to more seasons by including an outdoor fireplace or space heaters in the fall and a ceiling fan to move air in the summer.
8. Railings are nice but consider a true wall around the perimeter. It is great for privacy, wind protection, and provides better safety for small children. Since the space is large, a wall doesn’t make the space feel closed and tight like it would in a typical deck.

Everyone, including our firm, is always looking for new and wild ideas to catch the attention of the market but there is still a lot to learn from what was successful in the past. As I mentioned above, rooftop yards are nothing new but by studying and learning what makes them great and applying this knowledge to a new market and product type can achieve exciting results.

Happy designing!