Although you may not have consciously known it, you’ve probably noticed that virtually all pools are surrounded by fences. This makes sense for commercial and public pools, which are legally obligated to install fences for safety reasons, but should homeowners be just as quick to adopt fencing as a norm for their residential pools? If so, are there certain kinds of fences that it makes more sense to install than others?

Just as with commercial pools, the two biggest concerns to mediate when you own a private pool are safety and privacy, especially for your family. Today, we’ll take a look at which types of fences best address these and other considerations.

Safety

If you have young children in your family, you know how important it is to monitor their pool time, and you also probably know how difficult it is to keep an eye on them at all times. Unfortunately, just a couple minutes of unsupervised playtime can become hazardous if you don’t have a way to control their access to your pool.

Even if you don’t have young children of your own, your pool can be just as much of a danger to visiting relatives, neighborhood children, or friends’ children. So while you may not be directly responsible for their supervision, that’s no reason to not take a proactive step to keep everyone safe, which entails fencing in the perimeter of your pool with a relatively tall and very sturdy material, such as cedar, Trex, vinyl, or wrought iron. It also means monitoring and replacing structurally compromised sections of existing fencing.

Privacy

When it comes to privacy, fences can easily do double duty. The reason most of us build private pools instead of utilizing public pools is so that we can enjoy the luxury of an undisturbed morning swim, an unobserved afternoon tanning session, or an uninterrupted evening soak with family without curious neighbors and passersby peeping in. Just as you wouldn’t build visible windows in your bathroom, so too, most of us prefer a visual screen between our private pool and the outside world.

When it comes to privacy, cedar, Trex, and vinyl are all excellent options. If you have young children and want to build a double barrier—one for privacy and one for safety—so that you can retain the use of part of your yard for play, we suggest building a visually-screening fence along your property line and a wrought iron fence around the pool itself.

Cleanliness

Although it’s a consideration of secondary importance, it’s smart to consider how various types of fencing will affect your pool’s cleanliness (and therefore usability). Here again, tall and closely-picketed fences will catch the most debris, keeping your pool cleaner and more easily usable than it would be if left open to windborne leaves and litter. When it comes to your private pool, there are many reasons it’s a good idea to install a cedar, Trex, or vinyl fence around its perimeter.