Terraced seating allows your guests to sit in comfort, relax, and enjoy their surroundings. These level seating areas are a great place to include features like fire pits, water fountains, or outdoor lighting to set the mood and elevate your guests’ experience. Plus, you can incorporate decorative elements to express your style and add personality to the area.

Terraces, also known as terracing, were once common in stadiums for football (soccer), rugby union, and other sports in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the early days of the 20th century, terraces were typically earth banks covered with rows of railway sleepers, making them a cost-effective way to pack as many supporters into a ground as possible. However, they were prone to collapse and were unsafe if overcrowded. When hooliganism reached a peak in the 1970s, visiting fans would often attempt to take over the home team’s terracing. This led to violence, which in turn helped to lead to the erection of high fencing and segregated pens within terraces.

Embracing the Elegance of Terraced Seating Design

After the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, the Taylor Report recommended that terraces be replaced by seats at all major English football stadiums. In the United States, terracing is still used at some professional sports venues, such as in Dallas’ Cowboys Stadium, which has terraced party decks that can hold 35,000 spectators — although these sections are not considered safe standing areas and are not marketed as such.

To ensure the safety of your terraced seating, you need to be sure to design and layout the space properly. A good way to do this is by creating a terrace design plan before starting construction. For example, you must provide a distance of at least 1 m between tables back to back and between tables side by side. You must also delimit your terraces if they open on to public roads by arranging shrubs as barriers that separate the terrace from passers-by.