A new trend we are seeing as we watch the garden office market is the use of sun screens. Actually wooden louvered screens have been offered in modular garden office design for quite a while, but what is interesting is how we are seeing them being used in bespoke garden office design.
As we move into the sunniest months of the year, screens can be a useful tool in creating natural shading and controlling the amount of light filling your garden office as you work.
As we say louvered screens have been offered by modular garden office suppliers for a while. They tend to offer them as a fixed panel at the end of a decked veranda. To us they seem to be more of an aesthetic option than a practical one. As we have seen the louvered screen situated too far away from a window or door to be of any use casting shade!
Bespoke garden office designers are using screens in much more interesting ways. They are using timber screens as both an aesthetic design element and a practical solution for controlling light.
Powder coated aluminium seamed cladding is becoming a popular option on bespoke garden office designs, but on its own can seem oppressive. To break up the solidness designers are using timber screen panels, the contrast between the two materials is striking.
To make a sun screen useful it needs to be an element that can be moved and positioned depending on the time of year and time of day. In winter when the sun is low you will not want anything standing in the way of light entering your office. So, you need to be able to move the screen away from any glazing. In the height of summer on the other hand you will be grateful to have the flexibility of positioning a screen, to soften the harsher light without totally blocking it out.
To enable this flexibility bespoke garden room designers fit their screens on tracks which mean you can slide the screen to just where you need it. When the sun has gone in you can then move it back to its original position where it returns to being part of the aesthetic design of the building.
In its most basic form this movement is just a case of you sliding the panels along the track. More sophisticated systems can be controlled by a motor and remote control, meaning you can control the screens without leaving your desk!
In some situations the screens sit on pivots rather than a track system so that you can turn the whole screen on its axis depending on the direction of the sun.
Most garden offices come with the option of incorporating blinds into the design, but why not talk to your supplier about incorporating sun screens, which are not only practical, but can be aesthetically striking too.
Next steps:
If you like the idea of incorporating sun screens into your garden office design, ask your supplier if they offer them. Most bespoke garden office suppliers will be able to design in natural shading options like this. When designing your garden office it will be useful to have a clear idea of the direction of the sun in your garden, so get you compass out!