Family Hangout Garden Room by Timber Rooms
Published: 18 April 2026
Reading Time: 2 minutes 40 seconds
Many homeowners are looking to create an extra space that works for the whole family, and a fully insulated room in the garden can be one solution. This 5.8m x 3.8m project in Storrington, West Sussex, by Timber Rooms is a great example of that idea in practice: a garden sitting room with projector setup, a decked veranda, and enough space to become a versatile room that can evolve with family life.
The brief was to create somewhere family members could use together and separately, giving teenagers or adults a place to spend time without everyone competing for space in the main house. As with Timber Rooms' other high-spec buildings, the intention is everyday, year-round use, so it becomes more of an extension of the home than a seasonal extra.
A Versatile Extra Room
Designed specifically for the long, relatively narrow plot, the proportions do a lot of the work here. At 5.8m deep by 3.8m wide, the room has enough length for a comfortable sitting area while still leaving scope for an office desk or homework corner.
That flexibility matters in family projects, where one use rarely stays fixed forever. Rather than locking the building into a single role, the layout leaves room for it to absorb new routines over time.
Sliding Doors And Letterbox Windows
A set of sliding doors spans the full front elevation and opens onto the decked veranda, helping to blur the boundary between inside and outside in the way only a well-designed garden room can. On warmer days, the room can spill forwards into the garden; on cooler ones, the owners still keep that connection while remaining sheltered behind the glass.
Towards the back of the building, three letterbox-style opening windows have been introduced, two on the left-hand wall and one on the rear wall. They are a simple detail, but a useful one, bringing extra daylight into the deeper part of the plan and allowing easy background ventilation when needed.
Waney Edge Douglas Fir
Timber Rooms offers a broad palette of exterior finishes, but the choice here is especially characterful. The owners opted for Douglas Fir cladding in a natural waney edge profile, which gives the room a more rustic feel than the crisply machined boards and composite finishes often seen on contemporary garden rooms.
It is a finish with plenty of movement and variation, so the exterior feels softer and less formal in the garden. Left to weather naturally, Douglas Fir will gradually tone down towards a muted silvery-grey, which should suit this kind of understated scheme well.
A Crisp, Projector-Ready Interior
Inside, the plastered and white-painted walls and ceiling have been detailed crisply by the Timber Rooms team. That clean finish matters here because the owners use one wall as a projection surface for films and television, creating a full-on screening experience without the need for a fixed screen.
Timber Rooms also has its own electrical division, so the electrical layout can be shaped around how the room will actually be used. Lighting, sockets, data points, and audio-visual requirements can all be planned in from the start, and the team handles the connection back to the house as part of the overall project.
Learn More
Timber Rooms designs and builds bespoke garden rooms across Sussex, Surrey, South London, with each project shaped around the client, the plot, and how the space will be used. To explore more examples of their work or discuss your own project, visit www.timberrooms.co.uk, call 01273 839 491, or email hello@timberrooms.co.uk.
