Enhance your offices connection with the garden by adding a deck or veranda
Adding a decking area or veranda in front of a garden office can enhance its connection with the garden. Decks, verandas and porches can create a welcoming entrance to the office, and if big enough, an additional seating area.
Decks and verandas are often used to overcome uneven ground around the building. Steps can be 'designed in' if the ground is particularly sloping.
They are used in both traditional and contemporary design. This page looks at how decks and verandas are commonly configurated, hopefully, they will inspire your project.
Traditional Verandas
A veranda running along the front wall is a key design of traditional style garden office buildings. Because traditional designs commonly feature a pitched roof, this lends itself to be extended beyond the front wall to create a covered seating area.
Another key feature of a traditional style veranda is the balustrade which is fitted around the deck. Commonly this is made up of painted wooden spindles.
Depending on the depth of the veranda, using a balustrade can create a confined space for seating. Because of this, many people ditch the balustrade. As we can see with this Smart Garden Offices design, the veranda still has a lot of character, but with a more spacious feel.
Contemporary Verandas
Verandas are commonly used in contemporary garden office design too. They tend to be open spaces without a balustrade and are often more of a design feature than a practical seating area.
Contemporary style verandas come in varying depths. Some are no deeper than a step, as we can see in this example by Bridge Garden Rooms. Others such as this Booths Garden Studio are a few meters deep, creating a spacious seating area.
In most contemporary designs, the roof extends beyond the front wall of the building. On shallow verandas, the cantilever design is self-supporting. On deeper verandas posts or walls are used to support the roof canopy. With some designs, there are supporting walls at each end of the veranda. In other designs, one wall is used with the other end open. This can make a feature of this supporting wall, as is the case in this Warwick Building.
The vast majority of verandas are rectangular. The Contemporary Garden Rooms team have created a stylish twist on this. They can create a gentle curve, which is mirrored in both the deck and roof canopy. The design stands out in the market.
Inside-Outside Canopy
In general, the canopy of a veranda is a sold section of roof. There are a few companies, however, who offer the option of a partly open roof canopy. This can be a clever way of creating an inside-outside seating area. As the canopy allows both sunny and shady spots. Garden Spaces are the leaders in creating this type of inside-outside seating area as see here on one of their show buildings.
Decks can create another room
Part of the appeal of working in a garden office is its connection with the garden it sits in. Some people enhance this connection by adding a deck area in front of the building, often wrapping around one side too.
A deck not only can help connect an office with the garden beyond, but it can also create a great seating area. This Garden Spaces project shows how the deck can connect with the garden.
Inside-Outside Space
With some garden office designs. The deck and floor within the room are set to the same height. Doors with a low threshold are used so that there is no step between the two surfaces. Often bi-fold doors are used in these cases. Once folded back, a free-flowing inside-outside space is created.
Some people choose to use floor boards and decking that are the same colour, to enhance the visual connection as this Garden Spaces design showcases.
Talk with a
Garden Office
Expert
Has this page given you ideas for your garden office project? Well, the next stage is to talk to a few garden office experts who specialise in creating personalised garden workspaces. They will work closely with you to turn your vision into a reality.