Despite the name, a well-designed sunroom can provide a lot more to a house than a room that you can only use when the weather is warm. Unlike a conservatory, which is usually a completely glazed room added onto the house, a sunroom is a room with a mix of glass and other materials that acts as a transitional space between the house and the outside.
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A sunroom can let in a lot of light into your house without being made completely from glass. Usually, some parts of the room are fully or partly made from brick, blockwork, or timber, with large skylights and home windows. Here’s what you should think about in the design stages of building a sunroom that you can enjoy even when the weather is cold.
The Year-Round Sunroom
Unlike some conservatories and sunrooms, a year-round sunroom is designed to be used in all four seasons. This means that the design should to take into account how the room will be heated and cooled so it can offer a usable space during both the summer and the winter months.
Doing this is, however, much more expensive to build than a basic conservatory, as your budget will need to cover the costs of keeping the sunroom either warm or cool. Try to make the room as energy-efficient as you can to help minimize your costs later on.
While you’re designed your sunroom, you will need to consider how adding the room will impact the adjoining rooms. In modern houses smaller, individual rooms have been dropped in favour of larger, more open-plan room. The kitchen and family rooms are now usually the hub of the home.
An open-plan family room is an ideal place to add your sunroom as a continuation of the room. You can make the sunroom a natural progression to the garden by adding it the open plan kitchen and living space or separate the sunroom more with connecting doors. Whichever you choose, the sunroom should feel as though it has always been part of the house.
Which way will the sunroom face? Sunrooms are often built on the southern side of the house so they can get the most light but also protect them from bad weather. Whether you are a morning or evening person, you could choose between positioning the sunroom so it will catch the most sun in the morning or the evening.
Light From Above
Bringing natural light into the sunroom should be the main concern when designing the room. There are a few different ways to get more natural light into the space from above. You could do this by building in a bank of roof lights, a roof lantern, or clerestory windows. There are lots of options that could suit your space. If your home is listed or in a conservation area, there may be some restrictions in the windows you are allowed to use in the roof, so check before you start.
Building Materials
Depending on the design that you opt for, sunrooms are most traditionally built from brick and blockwork, timber, glass, or PVCu, or a combination of a couple of materials, such as brick and glass. Unlike conservatories, sunrooms will usually have a normal roof, with glazing added in through roof lights, big windows, and glazed doors the open out to the garden.
As a sunroom should be an addition to your home, the materials used should match or complement your existing building. If you match your roof tiles, bricks, or cladding to the rest of your house, this will help the added space to feel like part of the house that has been there all along.
Think about the materials that you use for the windows and doors. Aluminium is a good idea. Aluminium is strong and lightweight, so it can support larger glass panels while allowing for slimmer frames, so more natural light can come in.
Pre-Fab Sunrooms
If you want a sunroom but don’t want the hassle of a building project, or if you don’t have the time for the work, then a pre-fabricated sunroom might be a great choice. There are companies that supply easy-to-install, factory-fabricated sunroom lintels which just need to be fitted and finished by a builder.
If you want even less hassle than this, you can buy a custom build sunroom that is made to your specific style and budget. The whole thing is delivered to your home, where the sunroom will be fitted for you. This will save you time and hassle.
Opening Up To The Outside
In your sunroom, how you get out to the garden will be important. The best doors for the room will depend on the style of your house.
If you have gone for a more contemporary design style, bi-fold doors are perfect. Doors like this offer full-height glazing and can be opened wide to provide uninterrupted views of the garden. If you want bi-fold doors, but have a more traditional style, you can tone them in by painting them to match the interiors.
Traditional sunrooms can look gorgeous with French doors. You could go for doors with wooden frames for an authentic finish. If you have a large sunroom, you could opt for two sets of doors at either end of the room to let in even more light.
You can go even further to blur the lines between the house and the garden by opting for level thresholds and choosing floor tiles that can be run from the sunroom to the outside terrace to create a real indoor/outdoor room. If you do choose to level the household, make sure you think about any drainage issues to avoid water getting into your home. You can lay exterior paving to fall in a way that encourages water to run off.
A sunroom is a great way to add more space to your home, that can be used to enjoy the sun all year round, as long as you make the right design choices.
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