L-shape vs Lazy L pools compared

Two pools, one basin

The idea behind both shapes is identical: one leg does the swimming, the other does everything else. Build the swim leg to the same rules you'd use for a straight pool — 8 m or more of honest straight water if anyone in the house takes strokes seriously — and let the second leg be exactly as big as your steps, your tanning ledge or your kids actually need, no more. Most builds don't split the water evenly; they put the bulk of the length into the swim leg and keep the second leg just generous enough to be its own room.

The elbow where the two legs meet is also the natural place for a rope, a rail or a simple change of depth to mark the boundary — swimmers know where their lane ends, and nobody has to negotiate with a four-year-old about right of way. Both shapes give you this for free. The only question left is how that elbow is drawn, and that's where the L-shape and the lazy L actually differ.

The junction: a right angle, or one that's been let out

The true L keeps a hard, square inner corner — the same angle as a house extension or a basement wall, which is exactly the point: it reads as architecture, not landscape. The lazy L eases that same corner into an angled, softened junction instead, so the pool reads as one continuous shape that happens to bend rather than two rectangles bolted together.

Corners are also where water tends to sit still, and an inner corner — the concave one, pointing into the pool — is the trickiest of the lot for circulation. A hard 90° elbow needs a return inlet aimed straight into it to keep the water moving; the lazy L's opened angle does some of that work on its own, the same way rounding a rectangle's corners quietly helps its circulation. It's a small effect, not a reason on its own to choose one over the other, but it's real.

How each one sits in the garden

The L-shape wants a genuine right angle to key into — a terrace corner, a house corner, a boundary that actually turns 90°. Set against one, it looks intended, almost like the pool and the building were drawn together. Set against nothing in particular, it can look like two rectangles that got pushed together.

The lazy L doesn't need that corner to exist. Because its own junction is already relaxed, it settles comfortably into plots that aren't square: a boundary running at a slight angle, a sloping garden, an informally planted layout where a hard right angle would look dropped in rather than grown there. A quick test: does your garden already offer a real 90° corner for the pool to hug? Take the L. Is the plot irregular, angled or sloped? Take the lazy L.

Building the two legs — and what it costs

Almost all of the cost difference between either L and a plain rectangle comes from one thing: more wall for the same swimmable water. Every wall on the true L is still dead straight, which is the formwork every builder has already done a hundred times on ordinary buildings — the added cost is simply more of it, plus one internal corner that's no harder than any other corner.

The lazy L carries that same extra-perimeter cost, plus one small wrinkle the L-shape doesn't have: its junction is neither a true right angle nor a curve, so it usually needs its own one-off shuttering panel where the two legs meet. That's a modest, local premium — nothing like what a fully curved shape costs, because only that one joint is affected and every other wall on both pools stays straight. Liner builds feel this too: a true L's right angle is a standard corner profile for most makers, while the lazy L's angled joint is closer to a custom order.

Covers, and the corner that decides them

The true L has an option the lazy L doesn't: because both legs are genuinely rectangular, some builds cover them as two separate zones — two standard slatted units meeting at the inner corner, or a low fixed divider with one cover per side — instead of commissioning a single bespoke shape. It's more choice, not automatically less cost, but it's choice the lazy L simply doesn't offer.

The lazy L's junction is neither 0° nor 90°, so it can't be split into two clean rectangles — the cover is always one custom shape, built to a template of your exact pool. On cleaning, the pattern repeats: the L-shape's sharp inner corner is the kind of spot that collects leaves and needs a robot or a brush to reach; the lazy L's eased corner is more forgiving, much the way a rounded rectangle behaves better than a sharp one.

Choose the L-shape if… choose the lazy L if…

Choose the true L if your garden already has a real right-angled corner to wrap, if you'd like the option of standard rectangular cover components, or if the look you want is precise and architectural rather than soft.

Choose the lazy L if the plot is irregular, sloping or informally planted, if a hard right angle would look like it landed there by accident, or if you're happy paying a modest premium for a junction that disappears into the rest of the pool instead of announcing itself. Either way, both shapes age well — they're too useful, and too rare, to read as a passing trend the way a single design flourish might.

If you're still torn, draw both at the same overall footprint in the designer and lay the plan over your actual garden boundary. The junction angle is the one thing a plan view shows you immediately, and it usually settles the question faster than any amount of reading.