Garden Room with Wheelchair Access
First Published: 24 November 2019
Refreshed: 15 November 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Designing a garden room that’s accessible for wheelchair users needn’t mean compromising on style. With thoughtful planning, a garden room can feature smooth, accessible entry points and interior spaces that suit all mobility needs. Here, we explore how Garden Spaces achieved a practical yet stylish accessible garden room, tailored to meet their client’s needs.
A Bespoke Accessible Design
Standard garden rooms often include steps at the entrance, making access challenging for wheelchair users. However, with careful customisation, a level entrance can be achieved, offering a seamless transition from garden to room. In this example, a 4m x 6m garden room by Garden Spaces was designed with accessibility at its core, delivering smooth, step-free access without sacrificing the modern aesthetic.
Contemporary Pitched Roof Garden Room
This building is part of Garden Spaces’ Apex Range, which combines a contemporary style with the benefits of a pitched roof. The sloped roof design creates a bright and spacious interior with a vaulted ceiling, allowing for a lighter, more open feel compared to standard flat-roof garden rooms.
As with all Garden Spaces buildings, the layout, size, and specifications of the room were tailored to the customer’s needs. In this case, the 4m by 6m building was placed close to the gardens boundary, with the necessary approvals obtained to ensure compliance. Building near the property boundary can allow for a larger room footprint and minimises 'dead space' around the garden room.
Low-Threshold Doors for Smooth Access
A key feature of the design was to make the room fully wheelchair accessible. The building was positioned at the same height as the garden’s existing hard surfaces, and a composite deck was installed flush with these surfaces to create a seamless transition. This thoughtful design ensures that the door threshold aligns with both the interior floor and deck level, making it easy for wheelchair users to enter and exit the room.
Garden Spaces installed high-spec, powder-coated aluminium bi-fold doors, which fold back neatly to open the room to the garden. Unlike typical garden rooms, this one features bi-fold doors at both ends, offering flexibility and a highly adaptable space that connects effortlessly with the garden.
Light, Airy Interior with High-Level Glazing
The room’s airy feel is enhanced by a combination of the vaulted ceiling, dual sets of doors, and high-level glazing. Both gable ends feature triangular windows that add visual interest and allow additional natural light to pour into the room.
Two electric Velux roof windows were also added, allowing light to enter from above, which significantly brightens the space. Both the bi-fold doors and roof windows come with integral blinds, providing options for privacy and light control.
High-Spec Interior Finishes
Garden Spaces offers a fully plastered and decorated interior for a quality finish, which was chosen over the vinyl-coated wallboards often used by modular garden room companies. For the flooring, the customers selected engineered oak, which complements the modern look of the plastered walls and ceiling.
Exterior with Stone Cladding
Garden Spaces works with clients to choose exterior finishes that match their style and garden environment. Here, stone cladding was used for the visible walls to blend with the garden design, while the non-visible walls were clad in Thermowood treated with fire-retardant paint. Using premium cladding on visible walls and durable, cost-effective materials on non-visible walls is an increasingly popular choice, providing quality and practicality in balance.
Learn More
For more information on creating an accessible pitched roof garden room, contact the Garden Spaces team at 0845 387 9 387 or email info@gardenspaces.co.uk. Visit www.gardenspaces.co.uk to explore their full range of customisable garden rooms and discover the possibilities for your own garden space.
