Roof terraces
Flooring, shelter, greenery, light and furniture that may stay outside. Drawn as an outdoor room, with attention to load-bearing capacity, water and wind.
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Approach
Furnishing a roof terrace
We furnish a roof terrace the way we furnish a room. With us, a roof terrace is not a leftover space with a few odd garden chairs, but an outdoor room with a plan: a zone to eat, a zone to lounge, a zone to sunbathe, and walking lines running between them without you having to squeeze past a sun lounger. The same interior designer who furnishes your living room also draws what goes on top of the roof, with the same attention to proportion, colour and light.
Outdoors asks for different materials than indoors. Teak and other hardwoods, powder-coated aluminium, woven rope, ceramics and woven outdoor fabric take sun, rain, frost and sea wind without you having to replace them after two summers. We choose those materials project by project, show them side by side in the showroom in Kapellen and say honestly what may stay outside and what you had better bring in.
A roof imposes its own rules. The weight of the flooring, the planters and the furniture has to stay within the load-bearing capacity of the structure, rainwater has to run freely to the drain, and ten metres up there is always more wind than at street level. That is why we begin with a site visit and not with a catalogue. We are not a roofer and not a landscaping contractor: we design the furnishing and install what goes on top, in consultation with the tradespeople who take care of the roof waterproofing and the structure.
From country to contemporary. We are specialists in the country style, but a terrace on a roof in the city often asks for something more restrained. We are just as happy to furnish a modern, classic or contemporary country outdoor terrace. A luxury roof terrace does not have to be busy for that: the difference lies in the proportions, in the materials and in the light. What stays the same is that everything is chosen together: the flooring, the seating, the greenery, the table and the light come from one plan instead of from four shops.
Roof or garden
On a roof every kilo and every litre of water counts. These images come from a penthouse terrace in Brussels. The floor tiles rest loose on pedestals, the planting beds are built up with a light substrate instead of garden soil, and the planting is chosen for wind and drought: lavender, catmint, ornamental grasses and perennials that tolerate a poor position. Click an image to see it enlarged.
What you get from us
Zones, walking lines, floor finish, shelter, sockets and light points are all on one drawing before anything is ordered.
The plan and the photorealistic 3D cost you nothing when we carry out the furnishing. The full arrangement is set out on rates and 3D.
From the measuring to the day the cushions are outside, you call the same number. We plan the tradespeople and follow up on site.
A narrow city balcony or a whole roof with pergola, lounge and outdoor kitchen. Small jobs are just as welcome with us.
Design
Design and 3D
We start from the plan, not from a lounge set. During the site visit we measure the roof, look at where the drainage points are, which way the doors swing open, which walls or parapets give a view and where the wind pulls hardest. That becomes a floor plan with exact dimensions. Only once the zones are on paper do we choose the furniture, because a 2.5 metre outdoor lounge sofa on a terrace four metres wide leaves no way through.
Zones determine the layout. A terrace that works usually has three or four zones: eating, lounging, sunbathing and, if there is room, cooking. We draw them so that you can walk from the door to the table without going around a sofa, so that the sun zone lies in the afternoon sun and so that the lounge corner is out of the wind. The floor finish follows those zones too: a wooden deck where you walk barefoot, ceramic or tiles where table and chairs slide.
You see your terrace in photorealistic 3D before you decide. We draw the design with the real materials in it: the colour of the deck, the shape of the pergola, the fabric of the cushions and the planting at full size. You can move the sofa, make a table wider or add a windbreak for as long as everything is still on the screen. What that costs and when it is free, you read on rates and 3D.
The lighting is drawn along with it. Outdoors, light is not decoration but the difference between a terrace that empties at eight o'clock and a terrace where you sit until midnight. We draw a lighting plan with separate circuits: floor spots in the deck, a light line in the pergola, illuminated planters and dimmable mood lighting. See lighting and, if you want to control it from your phone, smart home.
Our own projects
This roof terrace in Antwerp got four zones on a surface barely ten metres wide. A wooden deck with panels of artificial grass, a narrow water basin along the balustrade, an aluminium pergola with adjustable louvres above the outdoor table and a round lounge sofa around a fire table. Click an image to see it enlarged.
Materials
Materials
Everything is possible, but not everything stays beautiful. For the flooring we work with hardwood deck boards, with composite or with ceramic tiles on adjustable pedestals. Wood greys if you do not oil it, composite stays even but gets warmer in the sun, ceramic is the easiest to maintain and lets the water run underneath. We say per project which of the three suits your load-bearing capacity, your budget and how much maintenance you are willing to do.
The furniture determines how long it stays beautiful outside. A frame in powder-coated aluminium does not rust, teak asks for a yearly treatment and woven rope or woven fibre stays supple but wants to be hosed down now and then. For the cushions we use solution-dyed outdoor fabric with a mould-resistant filling that lets water through instead of soaking it up. That way a cushion is dry again within a few hours after a shower.
You choose the colour yourself, outside too. For the bespoke work we make in our own workshop, such as a closed storage cabinet, a bench with storage or a slatted screen, you can choose from the full range of 2050 NCS lacquer colours, in matt, satin or high gloss. Solid wood, veneer, melamine and lacquered MDF are possible as well, each time with a finish suitable for outdoor use. We work without ammonia: we oil or we stain.
What is possible on a roof
None of this is automatically part of every terrace. What goes in depends on your load-bearing capacity, your budget and on how you use the terrace. Say so during the design, then we draw it in and you see straight away what it costs.
Outdoor room Shelter makes the difference between a roof and a terrace. A pergola, a windbreak and furniture that may stay outside turn a flat roof into a room you use the whole season.
Windbreaks and privacy
Up high the wind is the real problem, not the rain. A terrace that looks wonderful on paper becomes unusable when the wind comes over the parapet and blows your cushions into the street. During the site visit we look at where the wind comes from and put a screen there: glass when the view has to stay, aluminium or wooden louvres when the wind has to be broken without creating a blind wall, or a tall hedge in a planter when the greenery may stay.
Privacy works differently on a roof than in a garden. You rarely look into the neighbours' at eye level, but you do look onto their roofs, dormers and windows. A slatted screen in the right place, a green wall or a raised planter with ornamental grasses closes off exactly that one sightline without you losing the view. Sometimes it is enough to move the lounge sofa half a metre, and you see that in the 3D before anything is in place.
Furniture has to be heavy enough or anchored. A light plastic chair blows away, a parasol without a sufficient base is dangerous on a roof. That is why we choose models with a heavier base, work with pieces on castors instead of carried ones, and provide an anchor in the floor build-up for large parasols. Here too: that is drawn beforehand, not solved afterwards.
In the spotlight
Greenery and planters
On a roof, greenery is a question of weight. Wet garden soil weighs about twice as much as dry soil, and a planter a metre long reaches a hundred kilos sooner than you think. That is why we work with light substrates based on lava and coir, with planters in plastic or aluminium instead of concrete, and with a water reservoir at the bottom so the plants survive a dry week without you standing on the roof every evening.
The choice of plants follows the position, not the taste. On a roof it is sunnier, windier and drier than in a garden, and in winter a planter freezes through to the roots. Lavender, catmint, ornamental grasses, sedum and tough perennials do well there; a hydrangea usually does not. Where height is needed we work with multi-stem shrubs or climbing plants along a pergola, so that the greenery goes up instead of out.
Watering is best arranged automatically. A drip line with a timed tap costs little and is the difference between greenery that makes it to the third season and planters you have to fill again in August. We draw the line into the plan, together with an outdoor tap and a drainage point, so that no hose has to run across the deck afterwards.
Price
What a roof terrace costs
No packages, but a quotation item by item. Every roof is different, so we calculate every terrace separately. You get floor finish, shelter, furniture, greenery, lighting and installation separately on the quotation. That way you see what a choice costs and you can cut back or add where you want, without a hidden item turning up somewhere.
The design fee falls away if we carry out the work. If you buy the furnishing from us, you pay no design cost for the plan and the photorealistic 3D. If you work with your own contractors, a percentage of the execution budget applies. The full arrangement is set out on rates and 3D, together with the terms and conditions.
The classes above are relative, not prices: they show where your choices push the cost. What your roof terrace really costs is set out item by item in the quotation after the site visit, because load-bearing capacity and access determine a great deal.
More of our work
A roof terrace rarely stands alone. Often we furnish the living room, the dining area or the kitchen behind it at the same time, so that inside and outside share the same colours and materials.
Layout
First the question of what you want to do there. Someone who mainly drinks coffee for two needs a different terrace from someone who wants to get ten people around a table. At the first conversation we ask how often you eat outside, whether you sunbathe, whether children come along and whether there is smoking or barbecuing. From that follows the balance between dining zone, lounge zone and open floor, and only then which furniture fits into it.
Circulation matters more than the number of seats. Allow at least seventy centimetres behind a chair to be able to stand up and ninety centimetres where people pass each other. A table standing against a parapet loses a whole side. We draw those dimensions out, so that you do not discover in May that the table is too long for the place you had in mind.
Small terraces gain from built-in benches. A bench against the parapet with storage underneath takes up less room than loose sofas, gives the cushions a place and hides the cushion chest at the same time. We make that bespoke work in our own workshop and deliver it with the rest, in the same colour as the slatted screen or the flooring.
Outdoor lighting
The same terrace, after sunset. Floor spots in the deck, a light line in the pergola, illuminated walls, illuminated planters and a water basin with colour-changing lighting: all separate circuits, all dimmable. You can read more about the fittings at lighting.
Outdoor furniture
An outdoor sofa is not a sofa with a rain cover. The difference is in what you do not see: a frame that does not rust, an open-cell foam filling that lets water through, a zip that does not corrode and a fabric whose pigment sits in the fibre instead of on it. That last point is why a good outdoor fabric still has the same colour after three summers while a cheap fabric fades grey.
We buy directly, without middlemen. Our outdoor collection comes from European workshops we work with ourselves. That means you do not pay for two links that add nothing, and we can have a model made in another size, another fabric or another colour than what is in the catalogue. Part of the collection is online in our webshop, the rest you see in the showroom.
Do not forget the rug and the cushions. An outdoor rug under the lounge sofa does outside exactly what it does inside: it turns loose furniture into one seating area. We cut them to size and bind the edges, just as with the indoor rugs. For the cushions we keep the fabric numbers on file for every project, so you can still order more in three years' time.
From our collection
This is a selection from our own outdoor collection. Every model below is in our webshop and comes in several colours and sizes. Click through for the dimensions, the fabric choice and availability.
Outdoor corner sofa Melan
Modular, in beige outdoor fabric
Outdoor corner sofa Soleia
With separate ottoman, in blue
Outdoor sofa Zerio
Three-seater, in sand-coloured weave
Outdoor sofa Forleon
Two-seater, in light beige weave
Outdoor armchair Zerio, white
Rolled armrests in woven fabric
Outdoor armchair Zerio, beige
With loose back cushion and straight armrests
Outdoor rug Oland
Arch motif in relief, four sizes
Outdoor pool and dining table
Billiards and dining table in one
Drawn Your terrace is drawn, not thrown together. Flooring, pergola, greenery, furniture and light come from one plan, so that the whole is right instead of something having to be added later.
Options
Everything that is possible
None of this is automatically part of every terrace. It depends on your budget, on the load-bearing capacity and on how you use the space. Say during the design what you want, then we draw it in and you see straight away what it costs.
Option 01
An aluminium roof whose louvres turn open and closed: open for the sun, closed in the rain, with the water drained away through the columns. A light line sits in the edge, and side screens or heating can be hung from it.
Option 02
A fixed worktop with a built-in barbecue, a sink and closed cabinets underneath, in materials that can take weather and frost. We draw the services in as well, so that no hose or cable runs across the floor afterwards.
Option 03
A narrow strip of water along the balustrade or a mirror pond in the deck, with colour-changing lighting you control per circuit. The sound of water also dampens the traffic below.
Option 04
A vertical green wall or a row of tall planters with bamboo, yew or ornamental grasses closes off one sightline without the terrace becoming a closed box.
Option 05
A blind party wall becomes a backdrop instead of a boundary. We work with printed panels on a frame, which you look at during the day and which are lit up in the evening.
No idea yet what you want
Most people come in with a feeling and a few photos. That is enough. On the basis of that conversation we draw several proposals for the same roof, in photorealistic 3D, so that you can compare instead of having to imagine.
We draw the same roof in different directions: lounging, eating or sunbathing as the main function. You choose what stays with you.
Every proposal comes as a photorealistic image, with the real materials and the real planting in it.
Revisions are part of the process. As long as the design stage runs and you have us carry out the work, you pay no design fee.
Have you already seen something on Pinterest or made something with AI? Send it through and we will start from there.
Heating and cover
A terrace that only works in July is an expensive floor. With a cover, some heating and a fire element you push the season out at both ends: from late March until well into October. A pergola with adjustable louvres is the most usable solution for that, because you let the sun in when you can and drain the water away when you must.
You choose the heating for the place where you sit. Infrared heaters under a pergola warm the people and not the air, and that works better in the wind than a gas parasol. A fire table or a gas fire gives little heat but plenty of atmosphere and keeps people sitting outside. We plan the circuits and the sockets for it as well, because an extension lead across a deck is never the intention.
Overwintering belongs to the design. Cushions go into a closed chest or indoors, ceramic table tops stay outside, teak gets its treatment in spring and the water line is drained before the first frost. We put that on paper at handover, so you know what happens in November and what may go back outside in March.
Where we work
Our showroom is in Kapellen, our working area is quite a bit larger. We furnish roof terraces in Antwerp, Brasschaat, Schoten, Kapellen, Wilrijk, Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Knokke and Leuven, and regularly in the Netherlands and Luxembourg as well. For the first conversation we come to you, because you do not judge a roof from a photo.
We arrange the transport up as well. On a roof nothing gets up there by itself. During the site visit we look at whether the furniture has to go up by the stairs, the lift or a crane, and we take that into account when choosing the models: a modular sofa that goes up in four parts fits where a fixed sofa gets stuck. See also our showrooms and our method.
Execution
How we work
This is how a terrace project runs with us. Every step has a clear end point, so you always know where you stand and what comes next.
We look at the roof, the access and the drainage points, and ask what you mainly want to do there. That conversation and the budget estimate are free of charge.
We take the measurements and draw everything out, with the services in it. You see it in photorealistic 3D and adjust until it is right.
Samples of deck timber, ceramic, outdoor fabric and rug you lay side by side at our place, in daylight. We order and plan the delivery.
Flooring, shelter, lighting, greenery and furniture are installed in the right order, with the transport up by lift, stairs or crane.
We walk through everything together and hand over a maintenance sheet for the first season. After that we keep following it up.
Special When it is allowed to be exceptional. Illuminated chimneys, illuminated planters and floor spots in the deck turn the same roof into a second room after sunset.
Your own image
A photo from Pinterest, a screenshot from Instagram or an image you made yourself with AI: do send it through. We redraw it in photorealistic 3D, to the dimensions of your roof and with materials that really exist and can be delivered. And we tell you straight away what it costs and what the load-bearing capacity allows.
Through the form at the bottom you can send up to ten photos, sketches or plans. A screenshot is enough.
You see your own image back, but with dimensions that add up, real materials and the services in it. What cannot be built, we say honestly.
A quotation item by item: flooring, shelter, furniture, greenery, lighting and installation separately, so you can choose for yourself.
A flat roof is not leftover space. It is the only place in the city where nobody looks in at you.
More than the terrace
Everything you see here, we draw and install ourselves. Click through to the room or the service you are looking for.
Complete interior
The entire home in one design and one schedule.
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Living room
Seating, fireplace and cabinetry drawn as one whole.
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Bathrooms
Vanity unit, sanitary ware, tiles and services in one plan.
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Kitchens
Cabinets, worktop and appliances matched to each other.
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Bedrooms
Bed, cabinetry and lighting as one whole.
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Dining room
Table, chairs and light in the right proportion.
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Dressing room
Laid out around your wardrobe, right down to the drawer.
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Bespoke cabinetry
Alcoves, corners and chimney breasts nobody else manages to fill.
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Renovation
From shell to finish, with one point of contact.
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Terrace and outdoor space
Terraces at ground level, with the same approach.
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Curtains
Measured, sewn to size and installed by us.
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Bespoke rugs
Cut to size and edged, in wool or synthetic.
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Poles and tracks
The fixing that suits the fabric and the window.
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Tiebacks
The detail that gives a curtain its shape.
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Lighting
Light per zone, separately switched and dimmable.
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Shutters and blinds
Controlling light without losing the view.
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Smart home
Lighting, curtains and heating on one system.
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Hotel interiors
Rooms and a lobby that stand up to daily use.
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What we take out
A lounge set that looks roomy in the photo leaves no way through on four metres of width. We draw it in to scale.
A floor laid flat on the roof closes off the water run. Pedestals or joists keep the drainage clear.
Wet garden soil in a long concrete planter weighs more than the structure can take. Light substrates solve that.
A fixed three-metre sofa does not fit in the lift or round the bend of the stairs. We measure the access route as well.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
That depends on what goes into it. An existing floor with a lounge set and a few planters is in a completely different order from a terrace with a new floor finish, a pergola with adjustable louvres, windbreaks and a lighting plan. At the first conversation you find out free of charge which order of magnitude your project falls into. After that comes a quotation in which flooring, shelter, furniture, greenery, lighting and installation are set out separately.
Not every roof. The load-bearing capacity of the structure and the condition of the roof waterproofing determine what is possible. That is why we always start with a site visit and ask, when there is any doubt, for a check by an engineer or a roofer. We do not lay roofs and do not do roof waterproofing ourselves: we design and install the furnishing that goes on top.
Yes, provided the floor rests on adjustable pedestals or on wooden joists. The water then runs underneath the floor to the existing drainage points. We keep those points accessible, so you can go on cleaning them without breaking up the floor.
We take that into account in the design. We put windbreaks where it really pulls, choose furniture that is heavy enough or anchor it, and use planting that tolerates wind. A parasol gets a sufficiently heavy base or an anchor in the floor build-up.
Often you do, and it differs from one municipality to another. We tell you where to check and supply the plans and elevations you need for the application. The application itself you submit, or your architect does it for you.
Sometimes. A compact bath or plunge pool is possible, but only when the load-bearing capacity, the access and the drainage allow it. That is calculated beforehand, and when it cannot be done we say so before anything is ordered.
No. We are interior designers and fitters: we draw the outdoor space, make the bespoke work in our own workshop and install floor finishes, shelter, greenery in planters, lighting and furniture. For roof waterproofing, structural work and full landscaping we work together with the tradespeople you already have or that we bring in.
Yes. We arrange the transport up by lift, stairs or crane and take that into account when choosing the models. A modular sofa that goes up in parts often fits where a fixed model gets stuck.
Frames in powder-coated aluminium, teak or woven rope, with cushions in solution-dyed outdoor fabric and a quick-drying filling. Those stay outside the whole season. The cushions we store in a chest or indoors in winter; the maintenance sheet you get at handover says piece by piece what needs to happen.
The cushions go into the storage chest or indoors, the water line is drained before the first frost, teak gets its treatment in spring and ceramic and aluminium simply stay where they are. Planting in planters we protect against freezing through where needed. All of that is on the maintenance sheet.
Yes. You can buy individual outdoor sofas, armchairs, tables and rugs from us, in our webshop marcottestyle.store as well. Would you like advice on the layout with it? That is just as possible: small jobs are as welcome with us as a complete terrace.
Yes. We work throughout Flanders and Brussels, and regularly in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Our showroom is in Kapellen, but for the first conversation we come to you, because you do not judge a roof from a photo.
Tell us about your roof terrace
Send us a few photos of the roof and the approximate dimensions. We answer within 24 hours.
Book a conversation
Pick where and when it suits you. We confirm within one working day.
