Grow your warm-weather living space by moving outdoors. Thanks to a whole new crop of outdoor amenities, including weatherproof appliances, you can enjoy your time outdoors with all the comforts of your indoor spaces.

OUTDOOR AMENITIES Your lifestyle should dictate what type of outdoor rooms you add to your landscape. If you love to eat outside, create an outdoor dining room. For romantic open-air meals, Carlita Herrea-Argyros of New Jersey enjoys an outdoor dining room with a Victorian-style wrought-iron gazebo that offers structure and candle lighting from above. To create your own outdoor paradise, consider these additions to your deck or patio:

OPEN-AIR KITCHENS Why leave the patio if all the amenities of a great kitchen are right at hand? For barbecuing aficionados, a grill near the dining area makes meal time a breeze. Grills come in sizes from small table-top models to large stainless-steel affairs with multiple racks for barbecuing and burners to cook side dishes.

But for home chefs, there’s a whole new world of outdoor kitchen amenities—stove tops, grill islands, warming drawers, sinks and refrigerators. You can outfit an entire exterior kitchen with a built-in natural-gas grill as the centerpiece. Surround the cooking area with granite or concrete countertops for a natural look. Add a stainless-steel sink for washing up before meals, rinsing off produce fresh-picked from the garden, and filling pots for cooking pasta or blanching veggies.

You can even install an outdoor dishwasher so no one gets stuck with dish duty. An undercounter refrigerator keeps drinks for the whole family chilled to perfection. Pulling it all together are outdoor cabinets made from durable materials, such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), that can stand up to any weather.