The Garden Room Guide

Garden room, garden office & garden studio buyers guide

Visit the Swift Garden Rooms website

home extensions

Garden Room House Extensions

We feature a lot of standalone garden rooms on The Garden Room Guide but we’re not sure that all readers are aware that many garden room designs can be adapted and attached to the house to form a traditional house extension.

Well they can, and they are a real alternative to a conservatory or traditional brick built extension, they also offer many benefits over other types of construction in that they are highly insulated, and because of their offsite construction are extremely quick to install – a whole project can be completed in weeks.

[flagallery gid=47 name=”Gallery”]

Gallery requires flash

There are more formal regulations for using a garden room as an extension than the standalone version  – it will have to undergo building regulation certification and in most cases will require planning permission, but don’t be put off you would need to comply with building regs and planning permission for a brick built extension too!

Okay, it’s not quite as simple as removing one wall from a standard garden room design and plonking it next to the house, but many garden room designers will be able to adapt their designs or design you a one off garden room fit for the site.

Garden rooms are largely constructed off site in factory controlled conditions meaning a precision built, high quality product is delivered to site, the modular design means that the shell of the garden room can be installed in a matter of hours and the room finished and ready to use in a week or so – what other high quality building system can claim that?!

Homeowners thinking of adding an extension today, have a wishlist of desirable design features such as bi-fold doors, slick lighting systems and under floor heating – these features come as standard on many garden rooms and are options on others, a garden room extension is a modern building method packed with designer features.

Garden rooms are built using timber frames or structural insulated panels, these are highly insulated construction methods, many garden rooms exceed the building regulation u-values for new buildings – as standard meaning a garden room extension will probably be the best insulated room in your house. Because of all this insulation a garden room extension will be comfortable to use all year round, you won’t experience the problems you can face with a conservatory of it being too hot in summer and too cold to use in winter.

So, if you are looking to extend your kitchen into the garden, add a modern airy playroom or a home office give serious thought to a garden room extension. We’ll be featuring garden room suppliers who have added garden rooms to houses over the next few days, but if you like a particular style of standalone garden room its always worth asking if they would install it as an extension to your house, see our directory for supplier contact details.

A high quality, quick, clean and cost effective way of adding a home extension has arrived – join the revolution!

Homeowners Fight Market Slump with “Swift” Home Away from Home

In a guest blog Swift Garden Rooms talk about the benefits of a detached home extension:

The UK housing market slump has forced homeowners to think of new ways of adding value to their properties and making the most of the space they’ve got.

The latest statistics from the Halifax House Price Index revealed a monthly drop of 1.4 per cent, producing a new low for the average house price in the UK of £160,395. This crash in house prices has made it harder for people to move home.

As a result, one trend increasingly being seen across the country is the idea of a ‘detached extension,’ or an extra room built in the garden, as the way to create extra space and value.

Martin Lawson, Managing Director of Cheshire-based Swift Garden Rooms – who are specialists in creating bespoke detached extensions – explained why the new trend was so popular:

“The very fact that there is a small degree of separation from the main house actually makes the new room excel. Owners quickly find that when they go to this room to work, study, paint, play music, read a paper, or whatever it is they want to do, they do so much better. It is a place with fewer distractions, and a sense of purpose; even a sense of occasion.”

Detached garden studios and rooms can often be built without the need for a separate planning application, and work can start within three to four weeks of the design being agreed.

In as little as two weeks, the room can be built, fully plastered, decorated, lit and floored ready to be used. This is because these buildings are constructed using pre-prepared sections of Structural Insulated Panels, a common technique used in the USA, and something that is spreading across the UK. The resulting structure is permanent, robust and highly insulated, so therefore cheap to run.

Dan Morris, from Cheadle, in Cheshire, was converted to the idea of a detached extension:

“When it finally became impossible to delude ourselves any longer that working from home and having a baby were in any way compatible, we had some tough decisions to make,” said Dan.

“Extending would be the traditional solution, but no matter how big the resulting house was, I’d still be attempting to work from the same building in which my baby son was testing his voice. Moving would have been disruptive, and in the then-current lending deadlock, trying to sell our current property in order to buy a new place would have been fraught with difficulty”, he continued.

“The room in the garden, though a relatively novel idea, seemed to solve all the problems. Some (firms) only offered pre-fabricated options; others offered only bespoke builds on-site. When we met Martin from Swift Garden Rooms, it was like a breath of fresh air – anything was possible. We took the plunge, and haven’t looked back!” concluded Dan.

Swift Garden Rooms, part of The Swift Organisation Ltd, have designed and built dozens of bespoke extensions for clients, and offer a free downloadable guide to start the process: www.swiftorg.co.uk

..