If you are considering adding an orangery onto your home, you will want to make sure that you are making the right choice for you before you go ahead and start. There are lots of lovely orangeries cropping up at the moment, and they are something that have been getting more popular in recent years.
An orangery is like a conservatory in some ways; however, they tend to be built more of brick than of glass. They were first used for large homes of the very wealthy who liked to have a place to grow exotic plants and fruits – like oranges! Nowadays, they are that half-way house between a single storey extension and a conservatory.
If you want to add some downstairs space to your home, it can be done with an extension, a conservatory, a porch extension or an orangery, so here are some of the things to think about to help you to decide which is the right one for you.
Planning Permission – Before you go ahead and start building anything, you first of all need to check whether you need planning permission. Generally, an orangery, as well as a conservatory can be built without planning permission, as long as it falls under your permitted development rights.
These include keeping it under 4 metres in height (or 3 metres when it is near a boundary), it doesn’t take up more than half of the garden, and you keep the same materials as the rest of your property. For example, if you live in a timber framed building, then look at something like an oak framed orangery.
If you need planning permission then you need to factor this into your plans, as you will need to wait for the planning permission to come back before you can start to build.
There are lots of ways that you can use extra space downstairs, so you really need to consider what works best for you. What will you do with the room, and will you rearrange the layout of the rest of the downstairs in order to make more of the space? Thinking about this can also help you to decide what would work best for you and how much space you need.