Poolside living in a luxurious setting

Pool houses. It's the season to think about them. This new pool house was completed recently as an elegant adjunct to a 1920s Tudor-style house here owned by a young couple with two children. Last year, having completed renovation of the main house, the couple decided it was time to add a spacious pool house. Its stucco and timber exterior complements the distinct style of the older house.

Interior designer Keith Babcock of Bethesda, Md., was called in to work with the architect on all outside and inside finishes and to furnish the pool house to suit the several needs outlined by the clients. Specifically, the pool house was to function in the usual way as a changing and showering place for bathers (including a Jacuzzi tub and steam shower) and also provide storage space for poolside furniture and pool maintenance equipment. A carpeted loft above a portion of the main room was to provide play and sleep room for children.

The structure was also to serve as a year-round guest-house and as an all-season setting for the couple's casual entertaining. For that reason, a full kitchen and bathroom were required, as well as a small guest bedroom and ample closets.

An efficient air-conditioning and heating unit was selected to give year-round temperature control. In summer, when the French doors on either side of the house are opened, there is cross ventilation, and a ceiling fan keeps air circulating.

The couple wanted a low-maintenance interior that was ''light, airy, and almost tropical'' in feeling. So Mr. Babcock chose contemporary furniture of rattan and bleached redwood with rubbed white finish, and a modish color scheme of mauve, pink, cream beige, gray, and blue. All woodwork throughout the house is bleached and pickled a gray-white. Even the glass top of the coffee table rests upon hand-turned balls of laminated poplar wood, bleached and whitened.

The floor is concrete, painted to look like rose-toned marble, then given a textured, stain resistant, nonskid, no-hazard finish. All seating is covered with a tough printed canvas (the couple had said ''no vinyl, please'') treated on both sides to be water repellent and soil resistant.

The stucco walls inside are lacquered to a high sheen in a rich cream color.

This pool house was recently given an honorable mention award by the jury of the annual S. M. Hexter Awards Program. Mr. Babcock was commended for ''his deft use of colors and materials in the development of a warm interior which serves its many functions well.''