When you could buy a good sized summerhouse for around £1,200, why would you spend at least ten times as much on a similar sized garden room? Isn’t the term ‘garden room’ just describing a posh summerhouse, that sits at the end of the garden? Well, there are at least 10 differences between summerhouses and garden rooms.
summerhouses
A garden room is much more than a shed or summerhouse
Some folks tell us they are surprised about the price of the buildings we feature on The Garden Room Guide. “After all,” they say, “they’re just ‘posh sheds’!”
Will The Garden Room Be To Women, What The Shed Is To Men?
[caption id="attachment_4748" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="This interior of a Homelodge garden room shows how you can furnish a garden room like a 'proper' room"]
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[/caption]Yesterday in the Daily Mail, Sharon Parsons talked about ‘Wendy houses for grown ups!’ and about the growing trend of women buying pretty garden buildings for the bottom of their gardens.
The article focused on summerhouses and how women are furnishing them with Cath Kidson fabrics, smart furniture and plants, but whilst these summerhouses look great and will be a joy to use in the height of summer they are not so great the rest of the year. Soft furnishings can become damp and fusty if left in the summerhouse all year round, and pot plants won’t survive the winter in a cold summerhouse, yes you can add a heater but your efforts will be in vain as the heat quickly escapes through the thin walls and single glazed windows.
Some people buy a summerhouse and retro fit it with insulation but this is never going to be terribly successful – summerhouses are just not designed to take insulation, and to make it work you should have breather and vapour membranes fitted, and doors and windows that are double glazed – it can all end up expensive and not the ideal solution.
Disappointed? Don’t be, there is s solution – a garden room! There are a wide range of designs on the market from pretty cabins to contemporary cubes, and because garden rooms are built just like houses they can be comfortably used 365 days a year. Garden rooms are well insulated and come with heating which means your soft furnishings will stay in peak condition.
A fully insulated, double glazed garden room is not much different in price to a quality summerhouse, the Daily Mail article shows a range of summerhouses from £4,150 to £28,000, garden rooms start at around £6,000.
Because they are built like houses garden rooms are designed to last decades, many are virtually maintenance free with roof coverings having life spans in excess of 40 years – can a summerhouse say the same?
Yes, a summerhouse is charming but the clue is in the name, it’s just for summer (if we have one), for value for money, quality of build and year round usage consider a garden room every time.
Browse this website and look at our supplier’s directory for inspiration!
Photo credit: Homelodge