A Nashville Pool House is a 738-square-foot poolside structure in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, completed in 2024. Carlton Edwards designed it as a flexible retreat: a place to cool off after a swim, a quiet escape from the main house, and, when needed, a guest suite complete with a full kitchen and a concealed Murphy bed. The lot presented real constraints. A small existing patio, drainage issues, tight setbacks, and neighboring houses looking in from every side. The design answers all of them at once.
The building faces due south. A deep overhang shades the interior through the summer and admits low winter sun, while a full-length skylight on the opposite side washes the rear wall in daylight without opening sightlines to the neighbors. White oak slats, applied identically inside and out, register the arc of the sun across the day and the seasons. The effect, as the design team describes it, is sublime.
Material continuity carries from inside to out. Cast concrete runs from the interior floor to the pool patio and coping. Plaster on the flanking walls conceals the Murphy bed and continues into the shower. A four-panel pocketing door disappears into a wall pocket, leaving only a knife-edge track between the paver joints, and a pass-through window at the kitchen tilts open on motorized struts, leaving one continuous counter from inside to the pool’s edge. White floors and diffuse daylight mean no artificial light is needed during the day. At night, a linear light in the skylight gives the room a warm glow that reflects in the pool.
Architecture, interiors and landscape design by Carlton Edwards. Builder: HHV Ventures. Pool: Basin Pool Design. Photography: Zeke Ruelas.
