How a Pavilion Turns a Seasonal Patio Into a Year-Round Outdoor Room in Wilmington, NC

The patio is usable when the weather cooperates. The pavilion makes it usable when the weather does not.

That is the simplest way to understand what a pavilion adds. It is a fully roofed, open-air structure that sits over the patio or adjacent to it and provides protection from sun, rain, and the sudden afternoon storms that roll through the Cape Fear region without warning from May through September. It turns the outdoor space from weather-dependent to weather-resilient. And in a climate where the outdoor season runs twelve months but the heat and humidity make unshaded spaces uncomfortable for at least four of them, that resilience changes everything about how the backyard gets used.