Image credit: Garden House Design

Adding a garden room to your house can add not only real value to your house (Halifax say around 5%) but also your lifestyle. It’s a more cost-effective way off adding useable square footage to your home than adding an expensive extension. Not only is it cheaper, it’s less intrusive given it shouldn’t impact your daily life too much during the build. You’re also less likely to need planning permission for a garden room, providing the height is less than 2.5 metres.

Then comes the fun part. Deciding what you’re going to do with your garden room and how you want to create it, there are plenty of options from full builds, to a canopy or a pergola to just revamping an old garden shed or conservatory. Do you want a sociable space for entertaining with a bar? Have you always dreamed of a home gym? Or maybe a craft or music room would be perfect space for you to escape to. Check out Good Homes’ ideas to create the most stylish garden room.

Add a fabulous garden room canopy

Garden House Design says that “canopies are a great way to extend your time outside providing both shade and shelter throughout the seasons, day and night”. The Maluwi Canopy (pictured), can be used as a freestanding or can be attached to a wall and has a beautiful pine thermowood ceiling and fully integrated water-wooden walls. How open you want the canopy to be is your choice, as you can have it with completely infilled walls, one or two glass wood panels or a half wood wall to be more exposed to the elements. The canopy is the perfect way to bring an outdoor bar into your garden room and create a chic entertaining space for friends and family.

Bring greenery into your conservatory

Blending the indoors and the outdoors has been and continues to be one of the biggest movements in interiors over the last few years, and creating a link between your home and garden can bring a lot of calm.

There are plenty of ways to do it, whether you want to work on an internal or external structure. For the former, introducing more glazing can open up your space and bring in more light. Think Crittall windows, floor-to-ceiling glass sliding doors or even rooflights. The glazing can frame the garden view and feel like a fabulous garden room.

For an external structure, think of a retractable sun canopy or adding a chic external courtyard. You could create an outdoor living room, or if you have an existing conservatory bring in plenty of greenery (palms, olives, and bougainvillaea all work well) and natural furnishings. Iliv’s 100% cotton observatory prints and botanical frond fennels.

Create a luxe Mediterranean retreat

Is this the most uber-luxe garden room you’ve ever cast eyes on? Garden House Design are selling a luxe Mediterranean retreat to bring to your outdoor space, and feel like you’re on a sultry, summer sojourn in your own back garden.

The Camargue Louvered Roof Canopy from Renson has state-of-the art tech and electronic watertight roof blades, which allow you to control the amount of sunlight and keep the rain out at the click of a button. Should the wind pick up, you can add side accessories to close it off on all sides.

Pick from over 120 RAL colours and customise with a choice of different screens, outdoor curtains, glass sliding doors, heaters and lights and storage spaces. Add heating, lighting and then create boho interiors.

The sunken living space in the Renson Garden Room (pictured), sometimes known as a conversation pit, is right on trend. Now all you have to do is kick back and relax and keep your fingers crossed for sunny, Ibizan climes.

Put up a pop-up outdoor garden room

If your garden doesn’t have the space for a permanent structure, a pop-up garden room could be your answer. The brilliant Raj Tent Club’s origins began in 1990 Rajasthan and were inspired by the beautiful decorative tents of the maharaja. They were the first company to bring decorative (featuring ancient techniques such as embroidery, mirror work and tassel making) tents to the UK.

Lined with eye-catching block printing, the 3.5-metre pergola (pictured) seats up to 12 either on chairs or floor cushions. It comes with a 100% cotton waterproof roof canvas and gorgeous detachable roof scalloping, and you can choose from a selection of fabrics and prints.

For garden rooms for little ones, the Raj Tent Club also make a beautiful collection of children’s tents to be used as the most brilliant dens.

Have a garden room potting shed for pottering

If you have an old, dusty garden shed sitting at the bottom of your garden, why not transform into a stylish potting shed for a practical garden room that you’ll want to spend time in.

Firstly, think about painting your interiors white and brightening up the whole space (Little Greene has a lovely collection of water-based exterior paints). Then you’ll need a potting table or bench. There are often some great vintage ones to be found on Facebook Marketplace. Get your tools organised: Sarah Raven has a lovely Agriframes tool rack that you can fix to the wall.

To make a garden room you won’t want to leave, why not add a battery-operated travel kettle and pile of good books to read. And follow Good Homes’ guide on how to prep your garden for planting.

Turn your garden room into an outdoor gym

You could ditch the gym fees, and you use the money you save on creating your own outdoor gym in the garden.

You’ll need a robust building for a gym. Terra Firma Landscapes (pictured) can talk you through the whole process from visualisation, to sketching out the idea, to making a plan and considerately installing it. They also remove all the old materials from your garden.

Using In Frame Garden Rooms, the structures are fully insulated with super high-quality walls, floors and ceilings. They use fully recyclable steel frames, which will last for years and use warm roof technology, so there’ll be no excuse to not get out and do your workouts.

Make a boho garden room out of a classic shed

If your garden shed is just full of stuff, why not do an intense spring clean declutter, get rid of all the things you don’t use and turn it into a space you will. It’s a cost-effective way to add space to your home, and you can even pick up a free shed from Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree, if you can collect and dismantle. For extra light, you could remove the old doors and replace them with something like a pair of French doors.

If you’re going to be spending a lot of time in your garden room, think about installing insulation in the roof. Paint it inside and out, add some comfortable seating and string it with lights. Lights4fun has a huge selection of indoor and outdoor lighting and lanterns with their TruGlow technology candles, which flicker realistically and can be controlled with a timer.

Transform your garden room into a craft space

With a huge and welcome resurgence in traditional crafts over recent years, transforming your garden room into a craft space (or a music or yoga room) provides an important place to retreat to and get creative. Maybe a craft or art space is something you’ve always wanted to have, so why not go for it? Whatever your craft – knitting, painting, sewing, upholstery, block printing, ceramics or jewellery making – having a dedicated space in your garden can help you improve your skills in no time. Molly Mahon (pictured) is a block printing specialist and firm advocate of artisans.

Things to consider when setting up a craft room in your garden include planning out your space well. Crafting can get messy, so organising the room with shelving and glass jars for buttons and beads so you can see everything is crucial. Get a good quality table and chair if you’ll be sitting in one place for hours, and have a system set up so you can easily play music.

Don’t forget good lighting, especially if you’ll be working late into the night. If you haven’t initially got electrics, you can use a range of wall-mounted rechargeable LED lights.

Bring fun with a bright, colourful alfresco set-up

A garden room doesn’t have to be covered on all sides – you can create an alfresco living room set up with a pergola. A pergola is defined as “an arched structure in a garden or park consisting of a framework covered with climbing or trailing plants”.

You could add a solid wood, thatched or living roof, to keep out the rain and protect from the sun. Then throw all the colour at it you can find. Wayfair are a great one-stop-shop for every type of garden decor you can imagine, from outdoor cushions, rugs, blankets and bunting to DIY bars and drinks trolley ideas.