Creating a garden room that suits your style

Blurring the lines between outdoors and indoors, a garden room gives you the best of both worlds. The best designed garden rooms should feel like a natural expansion of your house, giving you the freedom and space you desire without the hefty price tag of an extension.

Once you’ve found your ideal garden room and installed it, it’s time to get creative. Decorating and personalising your garden room is all part of the fun. Here are four of our top tips on how to create a garden room that really suits your style.

Create a pathway to your garden room

One of the most basic and yet effective design choices you’ll make for your garden room is the pathway leading to it. You don’t want to be traipsing through mud and wet grass to get to your garden room if the weather is bad. A nicely laid brick or gravel path helps to protect your lawn and gives you a mud-free walkway between your home and the garden room.

Designing the pathway to match the rest of your garden will also help the room blend in with its surroundings. A garden room shouldn’t overpower the rest of the garden; instead, it should be a subtle part of the whole design.

Bring the outdoors indoors with plants

Fully immerse yourself in your surroundings by bringing potted plants and flowers inside. A garden room allows you to embrace the outdoors while staying warm, dry and comfortable. From trailing plants to delicate flowers, you can design your own garden retreat.

We love hardy indoor plants that don’t require a lot of upkeep for our garden rooms. Some of our favourites include succulents, aloe vera, and snake plants.

Match your garden room decor to the rest of your home

Many people want their garden rooms to feel like a natural extension of their home. An easy way to connect the two is by matching the interior decor and furnishings, so you feel as if you’re in the same space when you move between them. You can achieve this by matching colours, soft furnishings, and flooring to keep the style flowing between your home and your garden room.

Create a theme for your garden room

Always wanted a games room, home gym, or man cave but never had the space? Well now, you can create the hideaway you’ve always dreamed of with your own outdoor garden room. There’s no limit to what you can create with your garden room: all you need is your imagination.

Garden rooms provide the space you need to create a themed room for any purpose. They can even be turned into garden pubs with the right equipment.

So, now we’ve given you some ideas, how will you decorate your garden room?

Decide what the room is for

Everything else follows from this. Write down what will happen in the room, who will use it, when, and what equipment it needs. Winter evenings at a desk call for a different building from summer weekends with a paintbrush, and our guide to what a garden room is explains the differences.

• Storage, tools or a summer workshop: Garden Buildings, with no insulation, best from April to October.
• A compact office or hobby room on a tighter budget: Garden Pods, insulated, with electrics as an upgrade.
• An all-year office, gym, studio or games room: Garden Rooms, insulated and wired as standard.
• The highest specification, with the foundation included: Signature.
• Somewhere a relative can live: Granny Annexes, with planning support.

Check planning and building regulations

Most garden rooms in England fall under permitted development, so there is no planning application to make, as long as the building stays within these limits.

• Single storey, with eaves no higher than 2.5m.
• No more than 4m high with a dual-pitched roof, or 3m with any other roof.
• No more than 2.5m high if it is within 2m of a boundary.
• Not forward of the principal elevation, and covering no more than half the garden.
• No verandas, balconies or raised platforms over 30cm.
• Used for purposes incidental to the house, so no sleeping accommodation.

Our standard pent roof is 2.44m at the front before the base and a pitched roof is 3.05m to the ridge, so near a boundary the finished height matters: ask us to check it for your site. Listed buildings, flats and maisonettes, and designated land have tighter rules, and Article 4 directions or planning conditions can remove permitted development rights. Wales has similar rules; Scotland and Northern Ireland differ.

Building regulations are separate: under 15m² with no sleeping accommodation, a garden room is generally exempt, and up to 30m² it can be, depending on its distance from the boundary and what it is built from. Always confirm with your local planning authority. A lawful development certificate confirms your position formally, and our planning permission guide has worked examples.

Design and price it

Design your room in our online configurator in six steps: range; shape and size; structure and cladding; doors and windows; finishing touches; and your price. Every option shows its own price as you choose it. Add five contact details to see the full itemised price, and we email you a PDF design proposal with a link to edit it.

If you would rather see and touch the materials first, visit our indoor showroom at Unit A, Halesfield 8, Telford, TF7 4QN, open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and Saturday 9am to 3pm. It has full-size display buildings and free parking, and you can walk in without an appointment.

Sources: Planning Portal: outbuildings, planning permission; Planning Portal: is building regulations approval needed for an outbuilding?; Planning Portal: lawful development certificates.