Creating a near-seamless transition from indoors to out requires a few things. First you’ll want a big wall of glass doors that creates a visual transparency between the two sides of the wall. Second you’ll want to have those glass doors open wide and high so that, when weather permits, you get as large an opening as possible.
And then there are the details. Getting this sense of openness and oneness between inside and outside depends a lot on the four edges of that big wall of glass doors — its two sides, top and bottom. Here we’ll look at just the bottom edge: how to create a floor transition that makes for as seamless an inside-outside relationship as possible.
The first consideration is where to position the inside and outside floor heights in relationship to each other. To create as smooth and seamless a transition as possible, they should be exactly the same. This isn’t as easy at it seems.
There’s the matter of keeping water, ice, snow etc. outside so the inside stays dry. If it’s a seamless transition you’re after, you also won’t want to step down when going from inside to outside, and you won’t want to have a raised threshold. Either a step or a threshold will create a sense of separation that’s quite pronounced while you’re walking from inside to out.
A really good way to make sure that water in all its forms is kept outside is to have a deep and full-length overhang. This approach works really well when the outdoor floor is elevated above the ground, such as with a deck.
