If you’re a fan of hosting and entertaining guests at your home, an outdoor bar is a perfect environment in which to do so. How much does one actually cost, though?
Really, an outdoor home bar doesn’t have to cost anything, and it can be a DIY project. However, a professional installation can start from as little as $500 and easily climb into the tens of thousands of dollars, depending on your exact configuration and level of luxury.
Read on to learn more about outdoor home bars, the advantages they offer, and how much they tend to cost.
Join Me At The Bar
If you’ve got the space available, and you’re a fan of… Well, alcohol, then an outdoor home bar could be a fantastic addition to your home. While that might sound expensive, you can actually construct an outdoor home bar and keep your budget super low.
For example, if you wanted to adopt a more rustic image, you could piece together a bar from a pile of old pallets, or wooden crates. If you’re handy with a hammer and some nails, you can cobble something together in no time at all.
Sure, it won’t be luxurious, and it might not even be welcoming, but it’ll be functional, and yes, it’s still an outdoor home bar. In fact, you can purchase ‘flat-packed’ products that are little more than a few planks pre-joined together for ease of access.
There’s a great example of this from a manufacturer in the United Kingdom called Wickes (think Home Depot), who offers an affordable, ready-to-build product. It’s known as the “build your own garden bar”, and it costs just $550 – a remarkably low price for a versatile outdoor home bar.
Ultimately, it’s little more than a few softwood deck boards, but it does the job that it was built to do, and you can certainly stand behind it and serve drinks with ease. Wayfair, on their U.S. website, offers even smaller examples, with the cheapest options being nothing more than a trolley with some drinks balanced on top.
Although, it’s worth bearing in mind that this really is the ground floor, and from here, the only way is up.
Some of the most luxurious constructions will be fully-fledged bars that flank an outdoor kitchen, which we’ve previously discussed, or a pool, or hot tub. If you’ve got the landscape upon which you can build these things, then you most likely will.
Building The Best Bar
As you traverse the internet in search of stunning inspiration, you’ll come across some fantastic outdoor home bars. There will be beautiful brick-built bars, flanked by fire pits, or contemporary glass-fronted creations, lined with leather-topped stools or sofas.
Alternatively, you might stumble across a gorgeous hardwood bar area, complete with on-tap beverages, refrigeration units, and televisions. At the top end of the spectrum, outdoor home bars come equipped with heating or cooling systems, satellite television, and more alcohol than the local brewery.
There’s no real top end where these outdoor constructions are concerned, and the sky really is the limit. If you were to look at it from an item-by-item perspective, you could probably get a ballpark figure, but it really does depend entirely on your imagination.
The base construct itself will likely be $10,000 – $15,000, if you want something expansive and luxurious. You’ll need to lay a foundation, build up the bar itself, have a covered area constructed, run an electrical system to the bar, and so on – it can get pretty expensive.
And then, you’ll need to equip it with all the systems and furniture your heart desires. This could be an attractive outdoor seating set, a wide-screen television, spirit optics, and refrigeration systems, or if you pair it with an outdoor kitchen, grills and cooking platforms.
Furthermore, you’ll need to consider lighting, sound systems, and then the smaller considerables, like glasses, beer mats, and potentially cutlery and crockery. If you’re diving in at the deep end, you really need to know how to swim!
Ultimately, that’s the dream – that gargantuan outdoor space that you can fill with a wide range of luxurious amenities. However, it doesn’t have to be that dramatic, and you can get by with a simple construction, made from scrap wood and salvaged materials.
At the end of the day, as long as alcohol is involved, people are more likely to remember the fun times they’ve had at your bar rather than the bar itself, right?