Designing a Swimming Pool with Glass Mosaic Tile

Incorporating glass mosaics design into your swimming pool can be just the thing to make your pool come to life, it will keep your pool from being ordinary and suffering from the ho hum's. Colored cementacious finish coatings that are pretty typical today. After some years they start to wear and fade. With solid colored glass tile you will never have to have your pool walls recoated again. This can save quite a bit of money in the long run. Glass tile is forever, it will never change its look or loose it's vibrant color due to the wear of chlorine and sun.

Maintenance is a snap as the glass tile is non-pourus and cannot be penetrated by staining from unwanted objects that can wind up in the pool such as leaves. There are so many colors, sizes and styles available it is sometimes difficult to choose. Some have a reflective quality. They are manufactured using a mirror backing with a transparent colored glass overlay.

While some glass mosaics are opaque and others semitransparent. They all have unique qualities that work for many different looks and effects. There are even photo luminescent tiles that absorb ambient light during the day and then at night they give off that stored up light. Glass mosaics are fantastic for your waterline as opposed to the everyday tiles offered from most pool companies. Some pool tile suppliers have special software that allows you to design your own blend or design of pool tile mosaics.

One feature that colorful mosaics are great for in modern swimming pool design is the vanishing edge. This is usually one side of the pool that has no coping; instead the top of the swimming pool wall is flat and lower than the surrounding coping. The water flows over the top of the wall and down into a reservoir and is recirculated back into the pool, it looks as though the water just vanishes over the edge. The beach is a really cool feature; there is no step down into the pool. It is just like walking out of the ocean or a pond. The pool bottom is constructed so that it gradually tapers up to the level of the pool deck .

This can be wonderful for children and older folks. For wheel chair bound swimmers, the beach can be used as a ramp for the wheel chair as there is no step to contend with. Sometimes the entire pool is clad with the glass mosaic and the glass color gradates from a blue or green into a gradation of dark to light beige as it meets the pool deck My favorite pool enhancement is a swim up island bar.

You can sit around it sipping your favorite beverage and chat with your friends and family while being submerged in the refreshing cool water. The colorful mosaics also can help to avoid accidents from people jumping into the pool and hitting a step or swim out that cannot be seen because the step or swim out is the same color as the rest of the pool interior. This can be a spine-jarring hazard if you jump in and don't see the underwater object lurking below.

The answer for this is to have your pool contractor install a row or two of the brightly colored tile along the outer edge and in the center of the underwater hazard. So when you are considering the different options in front of you when you are installing a new pool or remodeling your existing pool, remember the many benefits that glass mosaic tile can provide.

Anthony J. Ventura is a tile and marble contractor with 25 years of experience in custom home construction, design consultation, and swimming pool design. If you have any questions or need advice see us at http://www.pooltileworld.com