The setting
Some places ask to be made the most of. This one sits in a beautiful spot on the Trent, and the brief was to turn the garden into something closer to a private resort: a place to gather, to entertain, and to switch off, in every season and at every hour.
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The canvas was extraordinary. A cantilever terrace reaching out toward the river, a plunge pool and an ice bath, a sauna and a jacuzzi, an outdoor kitchen, two fire-pit areas, and a pool house with showers. The structures and the landscaping were the work of others. Almost everything that makes a space like this actually work was ours: the full electrical installation powering the kitchen, the leisure equipment and the pool, outdoor heating to stretch the season into the cooler months, and then the light, the sound, the connectivity, the screen and the security, all pulled together so the whole terrace answers to a single app.
Project
Outdoor Entertainment Terrace
Pillar
Live, Play, Protect
Location
Shardlow, Derbyshire
Services
Full Electrical Installation, Outdoor Lighting Control, Multi-Zone Outdoor Audio, Outdoor TV, Outdoor Wi-Fi, Outdoor Heating, CCTV
Timeline
March to June 2026, ready for the World Cup
Outdoors is the hard part
It is easy to underestimate an outdoor project. In truth it is one of the most demanding things we do. Everything has to survive the weather and keep performing in it. Sound has to fill a large, open space evenly, without becoming a wall of noise for the neighbours. Wi-Fi has to reach where house signal never does. A television has to be readable in daylight and shrug off the rain. And all of it had a hard deadline: the work began in March and finished in June, in time for the first game of the World Cup.
Play: a terrace that performs
Sound is what makes an outdoor space feel alive, and getting it right across an area this size takes more than a pair of speakers on a wall. Working with K-array and Sonance, we designed seven zones of audio, nineteen speakers and six subwoofers, so the music is even and immersive wherever you stand, from a low background by the pool to a full lift for a party by the fire pits, each zone set to suit the part of the terrace it serves.
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At the heart of it sits a 75 inch Samsung Terrace, a television built specifically for the outdoors: bright enough to watch in full daylight and engineered to live outside whatever the weather. It is the reason the terrace was ready for the World Cup, the match on the big screen, under the open sky, with the sound carrying across the whole garden.
Live: the space, under one app
Thirty-two circuits of outdoor lighting, all controlled through Control4, let the terrace change character through the evening, from a bright, practical glow for cooking to a warm, low wash for late nights around the fire. One app sets the whole scene, the lights, the music and the screen together, so an evening outdoors begins with a single tap rather than a walk around the garden flicking switches.
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Underpinning all of it is outdoor Wi-Fi engineered to cover the grounds properly, not just spill weakly out of the house. That is what lets the screen stream, the system respond instantly, and the family stay connected wherever they are on the terrace.
Protect: watched over
An outdoor space this valuable, this open, needs looking after. We installed CCTV covering the terrace and the grounds, so the whole space is monitored and secure, day and night.
One terrace, one team, one deadline
What ties it together is that one team delivered all of it, to a single app and to a tight deadline. From the electrical installation that powers the terrace, through the heating, lighting, audio, screen and network, to the security that watches over it, all of it was designed and installed in-house and made to work as one. That is the only way a build this involved, touching power, water, heat and technology at once, comes together cleanly against a fixed date. Cast-iron deadlines are exactly where a single accountable team earns its keep: there was no one to wait on, and no one to blame.
The result
What had been a beautiful garden became an outdoor room that works in any weather and at any hour. A place to start the morning in the ice bath and end the night by the fire, to cook and host through the summer, and, on the day it mattered, to watch the World Cup with the whole garden lit, sounding and ready.
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And the terrace is covered by TrustPack, our ongoing support, so it is looked after whatever the weather and the party is always ready when they are.
See it for yourself at Our Space.
The specification
Power and heating
Full electrical installation supplying the outdoor kitchen, leisure equipment and pool · outdoor heating
Lighting
32 circuits of outdoor lighting · controlled via Control4
Audio
K-array and Sonance, 7 zones, 19 speakers, 6 subwoofers
Screen
75 inch Samsung Terrace outdoor television
Network
Outdoor Wi-Fi engineered for full grounds coverage
Security
CCTV across the terrace and grounds
Control
Control4, the whole terrace under one app