If two decades of writing about homes and gardens has taught me anything, it’s that designers often disagree. For every minimalist, there is a maximalist; for every modernist, there’s an acolyte of throw cushions and window treatments. And yet, ask a hundred pros which aspects of residential design are most neglected and two responses will pop up again and again: lighting and the use of water.

Most of us don’t need to be reminded how much we regret skimping on the lighting budget last reno ’round. But water —where did that come from? Not from the white picket fence tradition, it’s safe to say. Rather, it seems to stem from the growing conviction that homes and gardens can reflect the natural world in all its complicated glory.

Of course, while the pro-water movement may be burgeoning, it isn’t precisely new. In Asia, pools have been an integral presence for millennia. Still, the most direct antecedent of many modern water features—whether the fishpond in the garden or the water wall in the living room—probably resides in a nearer East. In the oases of Egypt and Mesopotamia, scarce and precious water was first pooled simply to preserve it or to grow aquatic plants, and later took on more symbolic and decorative rationales. Still later, with the rise of Islam and its mythic garden of paradise and strictures against representing the human body, water and its containment became a prime artistic focus as well as a cultural and economic one.

The Europeans learned a great deal from their southern neighbors. And in the same convoluted way that Italy’s grand fountains and France’s expanses of vast still water evolved out of the Muslim tradition, North Americans today are finding inspiration in, well, pretty much everything. General affluence combined with technological advances and the most polyglot society the planet has ever known make this a place where, when it comes to the pooling, flowing, cascading or spouting of water, virtually anything goes. And really, it shouldn’t.

Another thing the decades have taught me is that the continent’s backyards are home to a lot of empty ponds, and many more that enhance only the lives of mosquitoes. Inside the home, travesties are less common, but that’s partly because water remains something of a grand experiment. “Water is physically cooling, it’s calming, it’s mysterious,” explains British Columbia-based landscape architect James Bennett, among the staunchest of advocates. “But,” he adds, “it’s easy to get wrong.”

So how to get it right? Unlike things that are less calming and mysterious, less romantic and intriguing, things like drywall that don’t hark back to the origins of life, there is no simple checklist. Still, let me suggest five preparatory steps that I think are important, some of them dead obvious, others a little more specific to water’s distinct strengths and challenges.

First, do your research. A lame command indeed, but still I believe you’ll be shocked by what you find. The explosion over the last few years of plug-and-play, self-contained water features is truly astonishing, as are technological developments, like the dual-zone natural swimming pool that gives you clean unchlorinated water for swimming on one side thanks to the beautiful ecosystem that’s hard at work behind a screen on the other.

Second, mine the experts. On the West Coast, with its general ambience and all those Asian influences, Bennett has worked with water often, so it’s wise to listen when he says that one of the things to know about exposing a lot of chlorinated water inside the home is that, of all things, it could tarnish the silver. Likewise his caution to avoid standard-issue vinyl pool liners if fish are involved, because diving seabirds will puncture the membrane and drain the pond. On a similar note, Dan Du of Vancouver-based Bing Thom Architects described some of the planning that went into a home and water garden I’d admired. To keep the koi alive, he specified a pool of varying depths with a ledge too high for raccoons and lots of overhangs where the fish could hide from birds. Meanwhile, the trees and shrubs that surround the pool were selected and placed based on the views that would be captured from inside the home. How many blogs would I have had to patrol to find out all of these things?

Third, don’t ignore functionality. At first glance, a water feature might seem determinedly impractical, but I can tell you that’s not how architect Chris Landis sees it. I’d asked him about the damp pebbles on display in a master en suite renovation done by his Washington, D.C., firm, Landis Construction. In fact, the stones paved the exit path of a walk-through shower. Landis sees such a feature as admittedly appealing and expressive, but in no way extraneous. It’s a logical extension of the kind of thinking that, in the past few years, has given us the vessel sink and the waterfall faucet, simple proofs that water can be functional and beautiful at the same time.

Fourth, mind the science. Any water feature that involves flora or fauna will also require the other, since you are, in effect, creating an ecosystem. Unlike a terrestrial garden, which can be worked out over time through trial and error, this has to be more or less right, right from the beginning. For example, underwater plants will be crucial to the health of your pond because they remove excess nutrients, oxygenate the water during daylight, constitute a food source in themselves and provide a habitat for marine fauna, another food source. Meanwhile, in your specific environment, some such plants will thrive, others will die and still others will choke out everything in their path. The same ecological calculation will be required with regard to shade and sunlight, surface plants and the animal life that will be deliberately stocked, merely encouraged or, conversely, barred from the pool.

Finally, a preparatory step that should always be in-dulged with water features and never with drywall: Allow plenty of time for quiet contemplation. You will be spend-ing a certain amount of money and creating something with the potential to last for centuries. Especially inside, it will be the single dominating aspect that visitors will remember about your home. It will complete your environment or scar it, and there are a few hard-and-fast rules for how it should look and behave. Get out a comfortable chair (or, if you must, a yoga mat) and peer closely and carefully at the spot you have chosen. Then shut your eyes and let your mind wander. Soon there will be water here. One way or another, you will be contemplating its qualities for decades to come.