The cost-effective way to add more square footage to your home

telegraph.co.uk:

plans for this year, according to research by the trades website Rated People.It could also be a wise investment: building a good-quality garden room can add value to your house and make it easier to sell, says Grant Letts of estate agent Curchods. “We recently marketed four comparative properties for sale and the only one featuring a garden room sold first.

We estimate the added value to be around 1.25 times the cost of the garden room build, so if you pay £50,000 for a quality garden room, you can expect to see an increase of around £62,500 to the value of your property.”Compared with the cost of an extension or loft conversion, adding a garden room can be a relatively cost-effective (and less disruptive) way to add more square footage to your home, to use as an office, an extra living space or accommodation for guests.

It can also add all-important breathing space for those who have outgrown their home but don’t want to move. As long as your ­garden offers enough space to house a building, the options are limitless, as these examples demonstrate.When interior designer Jen Choate and her husband decided to add a garden building to their London home, they wanted to maximise the available space to create a structure that could house guest accommodation, as well as an office that could be completely separate from the house.“We did consider buying a prefabricated building initially, but then we had one custom-designed for our garden, and I’m so glad we did,” says Choate. “It gave us the opportunity to include a bathroom and kitchen, which you don’t get with an off-the-peg one.”She hired an architect to draw up the plans for the 22 sq metre building, clad with cedar wood and blackened timber, which took about eight weeks to.