With a growing desire for resort-style amenities at home to help create vacation vibes, backyard pools are in demand.
Pools play a crucial role in enhancing curb appeal, elevating the outdoor aesthetic with bespoke designs, offering health, wellness, and fitness benefits, and providing a pleasant setting for entertaining and quality family time.
From sustainability to sleek looks, here are the pool trends making a splash in 2025.
1. Unique Pool Designs
Lagoon-style forms replicating high-end hotel pools are hot in 2025. The design is often combined with waterfalls and shallow entry, making them family-friendly.
Sleek, minimalist designs and geometric shapes, particularly when homeowners are designing their pool as an intentional component of an indoor/outdoor connection.
"Homeowners still desire clean modern lines in their backyards, and while customization is king, rectangular pools remain the undisputed classic,” says Joanne McClain, editor-in-chief for Pool and Spa News and Aquatics International.
Dark pool liners – traditionally blue, pool liners in darker colors, such as black, grey and earthy browns are appearing, alongside bold mosaic tile and medallion-inspired designs.
Tanning ledges with built-in loungers, infinity edges, and incorporating a spa into the pool’s footprint.
Shade structures, especially pergolas, or covered porches attached to a pool house in the immediate pool area, are popular too.
2. Sustainable Pool Options
Homeowners are prioritizing sustainability, and choices regarding pool design and maintenance can help achieve that goal.
The conversation around sustainability and pools centers on energy efficiency, explains McClain. ‘Variable speed pumps give users the ability to adjust the speed of their pool pump according to the pool's needs, which translates to less energy use and better filtration, which then leads to potentially lower use of chemicals to maintain safe water conditions,” she said. Other eco-friendly choices include:
Fiberglass pools over concrete
Sustainable landscaping options around the pool
Using recycled or natural materials for hardscaping
Natural filtration systems that utilize plants and soil to clean the water without chemicals
3. Fire Features
One of the hottest pool design trends in 2025 is fire features. Watch for fire bowls placed on pedestals submerged in the water that appear to be floating, or placed along the pool’s edge. For an upscale look, combine water and fire together with a fire bowl on a fountain, or with a waterfall integrated. For owners of infinity pools, weaving a custom fire feature along the perimeter of the edge can create dramatic impact.
4. Pools for Health and Wellness
Health and wellness design is trending in 2025, and pools are playing a key role in the design trend.
Pools offer a great full-body workout. Popular fitness-oriented features include lap pools and counter-current swimming systems.
Hydro jets and waterfalls can relieve muscle tension. Saltwater pools are a popular choice, because of the therapeutic benefits for skin, as well as salt’s natural buoyancy, which can help to soothe muscles and joints, while offering mental health benefits too.
5. Cocktail/Plunge/Lounge Pools
With smaller lots, particularly in new construction development, it can be hard to balance the desire for both green space and pool in the yard.
The answer is a cocktail pool, sometimes called a lounge pool, which is a smaller, shallower version of an inground pool, usually with a flat bottom. There is enough room to splash around, cool off, and sit and sip on a cocktail, like the name suggests. Also popular are plunge pools, which occupy a similarly small footprint, but tend to be deeper than cocktail pools.
6. Smart Pool Tech
Wi-Fi enabled features make pool maintenance convenient and seamless in 2025.
“Homeowners have control over their backyard pools and other features through devices that can handle tasks such as water quality testing, chemical dosing, manage pool pumps and filters, and even program pool lighting. These features can be managed conveniently through apps on a smartphone.” says McClain.
Automated pool covers are trending too, with smart capabilities. Automatic pool covers also enhance safety and add to the aesthetic by keeping sightlines clean when retracted.
Follow NewHomeSource on Instagram and Facebook for more design inspiration.
