Garden Studios, Insulated and Finished for Year-Round Use

Why choose a Garden Studio?

Somewhere you can leave the work out

The reason people want a studio rather than a spare room is almost always the same. In a spare room the work has to be packed away. An easel comes down, a sewing table gets cleared for guests, a drum kit is a negotiation. In a studio it stays exactly where you left it, half finished, and you can walk back into it at eight in the morning without setting up first.

The people who buy these use them for painting, ceramics, textiles, music practice and recording, photography, yoga and pilates, and for seeing clients in therapy and treatment work. Those are genuinely different needs, so what follows is the things worth checking rather than a general sales pitch.

Light, which is the thing you cannot retrofit

You can add a socket later. You cannot add a window later without cutting into the building, so this is the decision to get right first.

The View 5 carries 3.5m of double glazed doors across the front plus a full length side window, which is why a 15m² room reads as bright rather than enclosed. If you paint, photograph or do detailed handwork, think about which way the doors will face before you settle on a position in the garden. North facing gives you flat, even light that barely changes through the day, which is what most painters and photographers want. South facing gives you a warmer, brighter room that will need blinds if you are colour matching.

We go through orientation at the free site survey, and it costs nothing to move the building three metres at that stage.

Walls you can actually use

A studio needs wall space more than it needs floor space, and this is where a lot of garden buildings disappoint. The interiors here are fully plastered and finished like a room in the house, left painted matt white, so you can hang shelving, a pegboard, a rack of tools, a rail of fabric or framed work exactly as you would on a stud wall indoors.

Matt white is also the right starting point if you photograph or paint, because it is a neutral surround to work against. If you would rather it were not white, it is plaster, so decorate it.

Water, if your work needs it

Ceramics, printmaking, painting, hairdressing and beauty treatments all become far easier with a sink, and considerably harder without one.

Plumbing can be run to a garden studio, but it has to be arranged before installation rather than added afterwards. If there is any chance you will want a sink, a kitchenette or a WC, say so at the survey. It is a straightforward job at that point and a disruptive one later.

Sizes, judged by what has to fit in them

• View 3, 3.2m x 3m, from £24,500. A yoga or pilates space for one, a writing or music practice room, or a compact treatment room.
• View 5, 5m x 3m, 15m², from £36,100. An easel and a work table with room to step back from the canvas, a full treatment couch with space to walk around it, or a photography setup with a backdrop and lights.
• View 7, 7m x 3m, 21m², from £44,100. Making at one end and a clean or client area at the other, which is what most people running a practice from home actually need.

If you teach or see clients, plan for where they wait and take their shoes off as well as where you work. That is usually what moves people from the View 5 to the View 7. The Aspect range offers the same footprints with different styling.

Usable in February, not just June

Every building is fully insulated with SMART heating panels included as standard. That matters more in a studio than in an office, because damp and cold ruin materials as well as enthusiasm. Paint, paper, canvas, timber, instruments and film all keep far better in a heated, insulated room than in a garden building that swings with the weather.

Pre-wired with a minimum of three electrical and three ethernet sockets and its own domestic fuse box, so kilns and heavy equipment aside, most studio kit is covered without an electrician’s visit. If you are planning to run something with a heavy draw, raise it at the survey.