An office-based in your home or a hobby area that’s bursting at the seams can be stressful. It stops you from working efficiently and stops you from enjoying precious leisure time. The answer may lie outdoors in the shape of a well-designed, affordable garden office offering space, calm and order. Easy if your garden is spacious. If it’s a tiny urban courtyard, don’t despair! Even the smallest garden can accommodate a surprisingly spacious outdoor room if you approach the task in the right way...
Consider a small corner garden office to maximise space. A corner door provides an attractive flow to the building, and planting and landscaping in front of a building will help it fit naturally into its surroundings. Even plants in pots will break up the line of a building and help to reduce the impact of height.
For long narrow gardens, you can add high-level windows to maximise natural light. All our buildings are custom designed to fit exactly into the space available.
When installing a garden office in a small space, it’s normally necessary to position it as close to the boundary or fence as possible. In England, remember that in most instances, if you are placing the building within 2 metres of the boundary, and you do not wish to apply for planning permission, the building should be less than 2.5m tall. This is plenty high enough for a comfortable office or hobby room with tall shelving, and no restriction at the eaves. Outside, a flat or sloping roof looks clean and contemporary.
Often in a small garden, a garden building is close to the house, so when you look out of an upstairs window you have a bird’s eye view of the roof. You have a choice of roof finishes from attractive, high-quality felt shingles to beautiful cedar shingle tiles. To really improve the view, a flat or gently sloping roof can be covered with a waterproof rubber membrane and finished with a living sedum roof. It’s a wildlife habitat, a rainwater soak-up and you get back the garden space you’ve given up – on the roof!
If the garden office is being placed near a wall or fence, consider a pre-painted building, so you won’t have to struggle to get around the sides for painting, (but do make sure you leave just enough room for future maintenance.) A well-maintained garden office can add an attractive focal point and sense of purpose to a small outside space, helping to enhance the value of your home as a whole.
Think about how you’ll use the room now, and in the future. If it’s going to be a garden office or studio, you’ll need to consider insulation, double glazing and the provision of electrics so you can enjoy your workspace all year round. This will also make your room usable in future as a guest space, a teen den or a retirement hobby room, both for you and potential future residents of your home.
Door and window security is important if you’re keeping IT or other equipment in the building. Rest assured, our garden rooms benefit from high-quality locks & door furniture with multi-point locking and security hinges fitted as standard. It's also a good idea to think about putting up blinds or curtains at the windows to screen valuables.
Clean path access between the house and the outdoor building helps, especially if kids are using it. So you may want to think about adding a path or stepping stones, both will add an interesting feature to the garden and draw the eye to your lovely garden room!
Small spaces demand multi-function solutions. If you have to lose your existing shed, why not have a combined garden room with a shed partition? Or if you’d like to combine a workspace with enjoying the outdoors, a surrounding deck area, covered veranda or linked pergola might be the answer. Take a look at our log cabin pages for ideas.
Our expertise lies in our ability to design the right garden office for you. Over the years we have been tasked with finding a number of ingenious solutions for our clients. As the first point of call, we would always recommend a visit to our show site which will provide some inspiring examples to get you started. (In case you were worried - we have larger options, too! Like our 4m x 2.9m proline garden office.)
Come armed with pictures of your garden and measurements of the space available if you can. Make a note of any delivery or access issues, as this may affect the recommended design. A log cabin construction will fit through a house whereas a panel construction may not.
Speak to our friendly team of experts about our range of mini & micro offices.
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