A garden room that adds space to an Islington flat by Eden Garden Rooms
A 3.5m x 2.5m second living room for a family in a shared-ownership flat, built through the house with no side access and glazed to keep out the view from the flats above.
When a family outgrows a flat, moving is usually the first answer. For this family in Islington, it wasn’t the answer they wanted. They loved the home and the area, and with their children now teenagers, what they needed was one more room.
Eden Garden Rooms built that room in the small courtyard garden: a 3.5m x 2.5m garden room that now works as a second living room, a place for the teenagers to study and spend time with friends.
At a glance
- Size: 3.5m x 2.5m, with just over 7sqm inside.
- Built for: a second living room for a family in a flat, used mostly by the teenagers for study and relaxing.
- Construction: built by hand on site, every material carried through the home, with planning permission and housing association approval.
- Finishes: vertical cedar cladding, dark grey frames, sliding doors, a corner window and a letterbox window; oak engineered flooring with underfloor heating, and hardwood decking outside.
- Company: Eden Garden Rooms, Kent, working across the south of England.
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No Permitted Development for flats
Most garden rooms are built under Permitted Development, without the need for a planning application. Those rights apply to houses, not flats or maisonettes, as our guide to garden room Permitted Development explains. So this garden room needed full planning permission. Because the flat is shared ownership, it also needed approval from the housing association.
The client said Eden Garden Rooms gave them a lot of support in this early stage, around both the decisions and the planning process.
Built through the house
With no side access, the family had assumed a garden room was out of reach. Eden Garden Rooms build on site using carpentry rather than delivering large finished panels, and a site visit at the design stage confirmed that equipment and materials could be brought through the home.
That shaped the design. The hallway is narrow and winding, so the building was drawn up around materials short enough to get round it. The team then carried everything through by hand, in very small loads. The flat is also on a major road through central Islington, so every delivery had to be timed precisely.
Light without being overlooked
The garden sits below the windows and balconies of the flats, so the room needed privacy as well as light. Eden set it at a right angle to the building, so that the main glazing faces down the garden rather than back towards the flats.
A 2m set of sliding doors fills much of the front and opens onto the garden. At one front corner, a slim, full-height window wraps around both faces, bringing in extra light without opening the room up to view. On the side wall, a top-hung letterbox window sits high above a wall-mounted desk, so there is daylight at the desk without anyone being able to see in.
Small, but comfortable all year
At 3.5m x 2.5m, this is one of the smallest garden rooms Eden Garden Rooms have designed. It was planned to fit the courtyard without taking it over, and the glazing makes it feel bigger inside than it is.
The family wanted a room they could use all year. Oak engineered flooring is laid over underfloor heating, which keeps the walls free of radiators, and the white walls and ceiling downlights keep it bright. There is room for the desk, a sofa and a small table.
Outside, the building is clad in vertical cedar boards under a flat roof with a dark grey edge. Hardwood decking runs across the front, giving the family a seating area for warmer days.
A second living room
The whole family uses the room, but it is the teenagers who use it most, escaping to the garden to study and see friends. For the family, it has meant staying in the home and the area they love.
The client said: “I found the build process with Eden absolutely fantastic from start to finish… Then the actual build itself was highly professional.”
Learn more about Eden Garden Rooms
Eden Garden Rooms build bespoke garden rooms in a contemporary style, hand-built on site using a multi-layer insulated timber frame system. Based in Kent, the family-run team work across the south of England. To find out more or to discuss your own garden room, visit edengardenrooms.co.uk, call 0800 093 5339, or book a design call at edengardenrooms.co.uk/book-a-consultation.
