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It's often surprising to poolscape design professionals how little thought would-be owners of inground luxury pools spare for the details that could make their home and recreational area a coherent, architecturally attractive whole. A large number of considerations will determine whether your swimming pool landscape design promotes privacy, convenience and safety. An intelligently conceived swimming pool landscape design will mean the difference between an area for fun and healthy exercise and one that is beautiful enough to add serious value to your home.

Unfortunately, there are only two ways in which these details are going to be attended to. Either you need to pay very close attention to the design and construction of the pool, ensuring that everything is done according to your taste and specifications, or else you'll need to know you're with a construction company you can trust - one recommended to you by family, friends and so on. The latter option is by far the better, as poorly managed companies can drag jobs out for ten times as long as they're worth, saddling you with unnecessary debt and hassle.

Possibly the best solution for a swimming pool landscape look that will be beautiful while also being immune to prying eyes is to surround it with greenery - plants tall and lush enough to form a screen around the perimeter. Of course, unless you plan to spend the other half of your free time dishing leaves out of the pool, you need to make your pick wisely. Large deciduous trees or even needle-bearing evergreens can be more trouble than they're worth, and fruit and flower trees, aside from being a source of obvious mess, attract flies, bees and wasps. Also, large trees with their correspondingly big root systems can cause damage to an inground swimming pool over the course of a few years.

Rather go for evergreen trees - the minimal amount of mess they'll create and their consistently beautiful, lush appearance means you won't suddenly find your private space laid bare in winter. One way to get the lush look you want without cluttering up your swimming pool landscape is to grow vines up trellises. Espalier trees ( trees the branches of which have been pruned and groomed to grow horizontally to either side rather than every which way) are another attractive option, as they create a flat barrier of branches.

Of course, if you're a parent or prospective parent, you may be more concerned about your young child falling in the pool than you are about good-looks or greenery. In that case, a fence or wall might be a good idea. You'll also probably want to double up on the security, and install a pool net. Not only will this keep your pool clean of detritus, but it should also hold the weight of any toddler or adult who happens to trip into the pool. Be sure that your hooks are solidly installed, and that the net is of a high quality polyfibre weave. If it's not, you're at a risk of a home drowning when the net wraps the person falling in - such accidents form a statistically significant percentage of home drownings.

It's also a good idea to surround your pool with patio tiling, ensuring you of a safe, non-slip surface when you get out of the pool. Lazing outside is one of the most luxurious parts of having a pool, so think about the social space you're constructing and how many people you'd like to be able to entertain.

It's the first sign of a narrow view of architectural arrangement and poolscape design when your pool is renovated without concern for the old-school stylings of the house, or vice versa. The best custom-designed swimming pool landscapes are constructed to complement the style of the house. Try to work out a design that will blend in, rather than call attention to itself, and that is consistent with the flow and look of your home.