How to Keep Your Pool Beautiful Year-Round in Minnesota

With long winters and extreme weather in Minnesota, keeping your swimming pool and surrounding yard in pristine condition year-round can be a struggle. But with the right pool hacks and a few tweaks to your space, you can make your pool the belle of the backyard. Explore how to keep your pool beautiful year-round in Minnesota.

Quick Tips for a Gorgeous Pool All Year

• During the season, stick to weekly maintenance.
• Test and balance pool chemistry often to avoid algae, odors, and cloudy water.
• Hide clutter with stylish storage or a pool house for a cleaner look.
• Winterize early with high-quality covers and protective gear.
• Do mid-winter check-ins to clear snow and prevent damage.
• Elevate your pool area with extras like fire bowls, water features, or mood lighting.

How to Keep Your Pool Beautiful Year-Round in Minnesota

1. Weekly Maintenance is Key for Sparkling Pool Water

To keep your pool water sparkling, weekly maintenance is crucial. The number one common denominator for a clean pool is that it’s vacuumed as needed (around once a week). This keeps the filter clear and the pumps working as they should. Plus, it ensures debris doesn’t damage any pool surfaces. Another maintenance must: completing a routine inspection of your pumps, filters, and other equipment can help you spot any problems right away rather than when it’s too late. With routine care, your pool is more likely to stay beautiful and blue.

2. Keep Up with Water Chemistry

Staying consistent and adding chemicals to your pool water ensures that it’s exactly where it needs to be. Without the proper chemistry completed, your pool water could be too chlorinated (strong smell, itchy skin, burning eyes), not chlorinated enough (algae growth), not alkaline enough (cloudy, hard water from calcium deposits), etc. Once a week is a great timeline to stick to, but you should be testing every few days to double-check. The sooner you can add pool chemicals to reach the desired chemical balance, the better.

Related Content: Water Types for Your In-Ground Pool

3. Store Pool Equipment and Chemicals Out of Sight

The next step to having a more beautiful pool year-round in Minnesota is to hide clutter and storage equipment out of sight. Oftentimes, a simple fix is to build storage benches into your pool patio or small sheds.

However, some of the most stunning storage solutions we’ve seen are to build a pool house or partial- to fully-enclosed outdoor living space, complete with shelving and cupboards to tuck away water balancing chemicals, pool toys, and more. The bonus is that this doubles as an adorable space to eat meals or lounge before and after you swim.

4. Winterize Before Cold Weather Hits

Another way to keep your swimming pool beautiful for longer in Minnesota is to understand our extreme weather conditions and prepare for them correctly. A mistake that pool owners frequently make is to wait too long to close their pool. The best time to put away all your pool supplies and winterize is before the temperatures dip below freezing. If you wait too long, your pool equipment could freeze and/or burst. Furthermore, the frozen water could cause cracks in your pool. Over time, these cracks can grow even larger if not addressed properly.

Related Blog: Getting Your Backyard Ready for the Winter

The best way to address cold-weather prolems is to winterize your pool and ensure you’re using high-quality winter protection. Thick, waterproof covers, secure fastenings that can hold up against strong winds and blizzards, and routine snow clearing are a must to ensure everything holds up.

If your pool has long, deep cracks, it might be time to upgrade your pool to something newer and better-equipped for the Minnesota climate. Here at Outdoor Innovations Landcaping, we excel at building to the specific weather needs of our region. Combined with unique pool features like waterfalls, waterslides, fire bowls, and more, we can help you landscape and hardscape your dream backyard space.

5. Complete a Mid-Winter Check-In

Once winterizing is finished, there’s a small amount of maintenance over the winter. After large blizzards and with enough snow accumulation, it’s important to shovel off the pool cover to ensure nothing breaks or caves in. It can also be especially helpful to check out the different parts of your pool and see how they are holding up amidst the cool weather. If you note anything broken, it’s important to fix it sooner rather than later, before an even larger problem happens. That way, when you open your pool in the late spring, everything will be ready to go for getting your gorgeous pool back to its best self.

Related Content: Seasonal Maintenance for a Fresh Outdoor Space

6. Open Your Pool Properly

After the snow starts melting, you can start getting excited for the new pool season around the corner. This is the perfect time to start prepping for pool opening with the proper chemicals and to find your extra pool accessories. Figuring out where everything is will make the opening process easier once the snow finishes thawing and warmer weather sticks around. When the days get warmer, it’ll be the perfect time to fill your pool again, complete your water chemistry magic, and make sure everything is in order. When you’re done, you’ll have a gorgeous pool awaiting you on hot, summer days.

7. Enhance Your Swimming Pool’s Aesthetic Year-Round

Another bonus that makes your swimming pool look great year-round is to enhance your backyard space with beautiful aesthetics. From landscaping to hardscaping, there are a host of options you can choose from to bring out its inner beauty. Whether you complete landscaping, decorate with mood lighting, or add extra lounging spaces, you can really make the most of your space. Plus, the best part about these additions is that they also happen to look great regardless of the season.

Some of the best additions to swimming pools and backyard spaces in Minnesota include:

• Ornamental grasses, evergreen trees, seasonal planters, and other plants
• Solar lights, LED lights, and colorful pool lights
• Water fountains and other water features
• Fire bowls, fire pits, and other flame-based features
• Poolside cabanas complete with shade and gorgeous seating
• Cabanas and outdoor living spaces
• Outdoor kitchens, bars, and dining spaces
• And more

Regardless of what you have in mind to create a stunning swimming pool and backyard, our team at Outdoor Innovations Landscaping can make it happen.

Explore Swimming Pool Features

Keep Your Pool Beautiful Year Round with Outdoor Innovations

There are so many easy ways to amplify your space and bring out its beauty, regardless of the season. Taking care of your space is always going to yield the best results, but adding beautiful features alongside your stunning pool can be the cherry on top.

If you’re ready to add the next best thing to your backyard space and pool area, our team at Outdoor Innovations Landscaping can help you get started. Our expert Minnesota designers and builders can help create a space that looks beautiful and holds up to our extreme winters. Ready to get started?

Outdoor Innovations Landscaping creates elevated backyards for homeowners in Minnesota. From in-ground pools to luxurious grilling stations to outdoor living rooms, we do it all. Explore our past projects and get a quote online to make your dream backyard a reality.