How do I design my garden room?
Curious about the design process for our bespoke garden rooms? Co-founder Jim explains how it all works.
What’s the first step of the design process?
In most cases, people come to us with some ideas of the kind of space that they want. This ranges from saying they like an example of ours that they’ve seen on the website or our Instagram or Facebook page, to giving us sketches and saying, can you build that for me please?
This is very much the beginning of the conversation. We explain that we only build bespoke garden rooms so the design is part of the process. We don’t charge for the designs unless they want to commission our services as designers only.
Our initial conversation happens on site, in the garden, where we can get a feel for the space, the house, the likes and dislikes of the customer, the things that can influence a design, how the sun travels across the garden during the day, where it sets...
A lot of the decisions come down to how the customer wants to use the space, as the requirements will influence how we work with light, with doors and windows and the kind of fittings and fixtures. We often sketch out on paper a number of designs that could work, to illustrate the kind of solutions that are presenting themselves to us in our heads as have the conversation.
How long does it take to create the 3D drawings?
The 3D drawings are fairly quick, but we need to have 2D floor plans agreed first before we go to 3D. The 2D plans can take quite a long time if the design takes a while to settle — people react to drawings and the creative juices start to flow, so we often go through multiple iterations.
Once the footprint is agreed, we go to 3D. We can do ‘artist’s impression’ style drawings, which we do freehand, or a CAD (computer aided design) electronic model, depending largely on who is doing them.
We have recently had the great good fortune to strengthen our team with the lovely Antonella, a qualified architect with a great sense of style and design, who can turn around designs incredibly quickly. Anto does a lot of freehand artistry, and Jim (who is much slower) tends to opt for the electronic versions.
How many times do you amend the initial drawings?
Most customers request two or three iterations. An exceptional few are delighted with the first draft. The most we’ve been asked to do is seven!
How long does it normally take from drawing the first design to starting and completing the build?
This depends hugely on the season, the demand, the availability of our construction teams, but is usually around four months from initial conversation.
What kind of obstacles do you face when it comes to design?
The more difficult obstacles usually involve plumbing and neighbours. The rooms with plumbed in toilets can present very expensive and logistically challenging issues, sometimes adding as much as £10K to the cost. We’ve done quite a few with fully plumbed in facilities, so we know it’s possible but it just gets expensive doing it properly. Neighbours are usually happy with a good design, but not always, and managing this can require a lot of diplomacy at times.
What is the wackiest design your client has asked for?
The lady with the 100-year old pear tree wanted a treehouse. Rather than build a garden room in the tree, we built it around the tree. This was a lot of fun. The pear tree produced bumper crops of pears from that project onwards, and we think it’s because the tree is so delighted with the project.
Do you create sustainable and eco-friendly designs?
Everybody loves the fact that we don’t use concrete or plastics wherever possible, and that we build a garden room from responsibly sourced timber. Increasingly we have requests to fit solar panels. The designs lead to installations that are very comfortable year round — cool and dry in the summer and toasty warm in the winter. We do a lot of rainwater harvesting and we love exploring all these options with our customers.
What do you enjoy most about the design process?
The human interaction — we love building what people really want, and we enjoy the journey of getting to the final design. We all learn from it. We’ve won several awards for our designs so we know we’re doing something right.