Small Garden Room Design: 9 Tips to maximise space

Dreaming of a garden room but worried your garden area is too small? Think again. Compact and quick to achieve, small garden rooms are ideal if you’re tight on space and will also help if you’re tight on budget. Making fantastic office rooms, gyms, or simply a reading or music room to enable the family to enjoy a little ‘me’ time, the small garden room, when done right, can make an incredible, yet affordable addition to your living space. 

However, it pays to think smart when it comes to planning small. Garden rooms come with a whole host of clever optional extras, and with eDEN, you’ll find many premium fittings and fixtures that come as standard to help you plan the perfect garden room in even the snuggest of spaces. So, how do you make the most of a small garden room and maximise your investment? Here are our nine eDEN top tips on making the most of a small garden room. 

1) Grow a small garden room with the power of illusion.

We’re no magicians but we’ve got ways making a small garden room footprint feel miraculously roomy with a few simple tricks. Starting by letting in plenty of natural light. Natural light gives the illusion of a bigger room, so consider adding big picture windows or large patio doors to really let the light shine in. If the wall space allows, a few well-placed mirrors are also a fantastic way to throw light around the room to create a sense of depth.

2) Aim high to give a small garden room an airy feel.

Within permitted development rules your garden room can be 2.5m high. That’ll give you a standard-level internal ceiling height which is perfectly adequate. However, you could raise the height of a flat roof to up to 3m. Planning permission is only needed in this case if you’re building within 2m from the boundaries. Of course, there are exceptions, especially if your building is within a conservation area. Check your property’s deeds for any build limitations. Although planning can slow things down a little, it doesn’t have to be a big issue and could be well be worth the extra effort. Extending a small garden room upwards could be just what you need, especially if you’re planning to fill the space with large gym equipment, a big projector screen or heavy-duty multi-monitor tech. Talk to your garden room specialist about the options of raising the roof and weigh up the pros and cons for yourself.

3) Small garden room hide and seek!

Underfloor heating is not only a great way to keep your small garden room cosy and comfortable all-year-around. Hiding your heating system under the floorboards is also a fantastic way to free up wall space, be that for furniture, artwork or some all-important storage. The same applies to your lighting. With built-in WIFI-controlled spotlights, you can limit the space taken up by your lighting system and change the mood of your space at the touch of a button.

4) Choose colours to make a small garden room feel big.

It might be a bit of a myth that dark colours make a room feel small, but it’s not entirely without merit. Every eDEN comes with painted plaster interiors so it’s the perfect chance to pick colours that will create the atmosphere you’re after from day one and help give a small garden room the illusion of space. Dark colours give a luxurious cosy feel. So, consider one or two darker feature walls rather than the whole space. However, while dark doesn’t necessarily mean small, bright, neutral colours will give the room an instant sense of light and airiness those smaller spaces need. 

5) Think twice before you fill a small garden room with big, bulky furniture.

Be smart and choose furniture for your small garden room with as much caution as you take for every other detail. All your wise use of colour and light will be wasted if you fill the room with big, bulky, or darkly coloured furniture. It might seem obvious but think small and light when it comes to furniture. Glass tables tops and white gloss furniture will work wonders at reflecting natural light and giving that greater sense of space. You may consider breaking up a large dark sofa with a lightly coloured throw or add pops of colour with bright cushions.

6) Plan out your small garden room to make perfect.

It’s worth taking your time to plot the exact layout of your room at the early stages of planning to ensure the room works just the way you want it. For example, have you allowed space to move around? Opening the door and walking straight into a piece of furniture is a sure-fire way to make a space feel cramped. So, consider the flow of the space and plan where the doors and windows of your small garden room will interact with furniture. It’ll be time well spent.

7) Extend your small garden room by taking the inside, out.

Large patio doors are an excellent way of making the space feel light and airy, especially when you can fling the doors open in summer. But an even better way to make your small garden room feel bigger than it is, is to extent your living space with a wraparound deck that enables you to bring your inside, out. Imagine rolling out your yoga mat on a sunny morning or taking a conference call alfresco. A small garden room with level decking space will suddenly open up a whole new way to enjoy both your indoor and outdoor space. It’s worth noting that premium decking is an add-on available to all our garden rooms, even the smallest of our stylish yet affordable EDEN Essence Range.

8) Split your small garden room in two to save on clutter.

With an optional upgrade of a tag-on shed space for your small garden room, you would be able to maximise the space in your garden room for living while hiding clutter and large items out of sight. Stash away server equipment, business materials, gym weights or simply avoid overflow from the garden creeping into your space and preserve the sanctuary of your compact garden room. The two-room option will cost a little extra, but it could also save you having to erect a separate garden shed space elsewhere, therefore maximising the rest of your garden room for leisure. 

9) Limited access? Un-limit the size of your small garden room.

With smaller gardens, especially in urban settings, it can be common for restricted side or rear access to be a limiting factor. That’s because so many companies only offer large panel prefab build options that often can’t be brought through the house, meaning your garden room dream gets flat-out rejected. If this is an issue for you, look for a supplier of hand-built garden rooms. As with every eDEN, even with very limited access, there is no limit to your building size as our skilled carpenters build everything on site. They only use individual planks of wood which can easily be carried through the house. Perfect to help you exploit the space available to boost the size of your small garden room.

A small garden room shaped just for you

So, there you have it, our handy top-eight tricks to help you maximise space and make your small garden room feel bigger. Your garden room should be shaped to suit your specific needs so take time to think it all through down to the finer details. A little clever design and careful planning and you’ll be settling into your light and roomy small-but-perfectly-formed garden room in no time.