Kitchen and Vaulted Garden Room

Natural insulation and finishes, garden views, lots of sky and light, wild and naturalistic garden for biodiversity.

Kitchen and Vaulted Garden Room

This transformation of a chilly conservatory and dark kitchen into a lovely, light, warm, vaulted garden room and kitchen also saw a complete redesign of the garden. The main aims being to increase the feeling of space and light, maximise views to the garden and make it warm in winter.

The existing garden room was a former conservatory with a flat roof replacement. It was very cold and fully open to the kitchen, making that a cold space too. We replaced the existing flat roof with a pitched roof making the garden room vaulted, which is a way to create the feeling of more space, taller windows, more sky and light.

We insulated using recycled jute coffee bags (from Ecological Building Systems). An Intello plus airtightness membrane was used to stop draughts and we installed Rationel timber windows, which were extra tall to throw light right to the back of the kitchen. The garden was redesigned to create atmosphere in a fairly wild and naturalistic style for easy maintenance and maximum biodiversity. Continuing the existing circular theme with circular lawns marked out with stepping stones, native plants and trees were used to give height and colour.

In the kitchen we retained the lovely brick wall which adds character, and created extra space for a radiator and a standing desk. Now the warmest part of the house the vaulted roof makes the space feel much bigger and allows for views of sky, trees and more light to flood the kitchen behind. There is less difference in cost between a vaulted roof and a single or mono-pitch roof than you might think and it is definitely worth it.