Garden Office – Ultimate How To Guide

The Ultimate Garden Office Guide. Let’s take a deep dive into making your own Garden Office with everything you need to work from home.

In the last few years, employer attitudes towards the idea of having home based office staff has changed. Experience has shown them that a home based workforce actually increases productivity rather than seeing a drop in performance. Coupled with cost saving associated with being able to reduce your physical office needs and it is no wonder that employers are warming to the idea of working from home.

So what does that mean for us – the house bound workers, and what pitfalls are there for working from home?

It does sound idyllic: Your morning commute is just a few steps to your home computer, no office politics to worry about, no boss physically looking over your shoulder; you can just concentrate on getting your work done without any distractions. For some, this is the reality, but for many of us, our new office (our home) is the distraction. Some homes can be very busy, noisy and quiet chaotic (in a healthy family kind of way) that sometimes it can be hard to concentrate. If only we could have a nice cosy office that was close to, but not attached to our main house….

Garden Home Office – The Advantages

Enter the garden home office. A Garden home office is a garden room that has been purpose built and furnished for office use.

As garden rooms become more popular, the various uses that people are finding for their new detached spaces is varied, and it is no surprise that the garden office is one of the more popular uses for a garden room.

So what are the advantages of a garden office?

Small Garden Office – Choosing The Ideal Office

As a small garden office (or sometimes large, depending on your needs) is a garden room built with an office environment in mind, you are free to choose any garden room that fits your budget and you like the look of.

Garden rooms come in many sizes. Our advice is look at a medium sized room. Too small a room and you might feel a little cramped with all the office equipment you will need to get your daily job done. Too large a room and you might find you have trouble filling it and wondering if the extra space was worth the extra cost.

One of our Elysian Garden Rooms is an ideal fit for a home office – big enough to get your desk / computer & other office equipment in to feel comfortable, but not so big that you are left wondering if you shouldn’t invest in a boardroom table whilst you are at it.

Sips garden rooms are made with SIPs which stands for ‘Structural Insulated Panels’ which have come very popular in the building industry recently due to their sturdy construction and their ability to maintain a rooms ideal temperature once attained, either by heating or cooling.

Construction of a sips garden room is usually very fast when compared to traditional bricks and mortar builds, with a room being completed from foundations to lights on and welcome mat in under a week. Check out our time lapse video here and also some of our case studies.

Garden Office Buildings – Self Build or Contract

Sips garden office buildings are shipped from our factory and come as a simple flat pack with everything needed to complete the build. Sips garden office buildings are by their very nature easy to construct for anyone who is either a DIY enthusiast or who works in the construction industry. Many love the ease of construction and see it as a fun project. If you are competent with a drill screwdriver and enjoy DIY and creating things, then we would highly recommend building your own garden office.

If your skill set lies elsewhere or you are just far too busy to take on a self build project, then hiring a tradesperson to complete your garden office for you is your best option. We advise asking for local recommendations for a company that can handle both the construction and the wiring for your electrics. For a construction industry company, or a good local carpenter, the construction of your room will be a breeze and should be completed in less than a week.

If you find that you are falling short finding good trades people in your area to complete your build for you, we do offer a build and installation service to our customers. Call our office today for a chat and construction rates and availability.

Interior Finish & Decoration

So your garden office has just been completed, the tools have been cleared away and you are now stood in your new garden office, and it looks rather empty and bare.

Furnishing your garden office is one of the most important parts of the working from home process. This is your space, not only do you want to feel comfortable in your new office, you want to create a space that actively promotes relaxed concentration and productivity.

Only you know what kind of look suits you best, but as this is essentially ‘just another room’, like any room in your house, it can be decorated as such; no special consideration needs to be made because this is an exterior garden office. Do you like bare painted plaster walls, or are you more of a wallpaper kind of person? Carpet or wooden flooring? Soft pastel hues or stark minimalist colours? Corner lamps or overhead spotlights? Whatever look you really want for your work space can be achieved, with the added advantage that this is your office, not connected to work, so no company rules to follow!

Garden Office Temperature Control

Just like any office, your garden room will need some kind of temperature control. Luckily a garden office is just one contained room, and as such is easy to heat, or cool, depending on the season, unlike an open plan layout in either your home or an office block. As an extra bonus, SIPs rooms have excellent insulation, so they maintain their desired temperature easily once it’s been reached.

As it is a small room, only modest heating and cooling solutions are required. A small fan heat or oil radiator for in the winter, and a portable air cooler or air conditioner for the summer should do perfectly. These solutions are readily available at prices that won’t break the bank.

We also suggest investing in a timed electric plug be connected to your heater or cooler and set to power up before your work day starts. There is nothing better than walking through the crisp cold air of frosty morning to walk into your nice warm office, or in summer entering a nice cool room from the heat of the day.

Garden Office Internet Access

Being in an office work environment, will for many of us, require access to the internet. Whilst it is possible to lay a network cable alongside the electrical cables when your room is being built, a lot of our customers are finding that extending the range of their home wifi is much more convenient and has the advantage that not just their work computer has access to the net, but also their other devices like phones and pads.

‘External wifi extenders’ are readily available at reasonable prices and will make sure that you are connected to your work office network with ease.