A garden office, recreates that sense of space between your home and your worklife. The mental benefits can be enormous, while the move to find a place to rest your laptop and get on with a days work, free of the household distractions, make our garden offices a smart business decision. We’re based in Essex, so if you’re googling for a garden office near me, then hit the button below.
WFH? Anyone who has ever worked from home, knows the difficulty of finding a comfortable workspace, sharing it with toddlers, partners and the temptation of whatever is in your fridge or cupboards. Sometimes, you just need a little bit of workspace to call your own. It’s time to stop using the bed as a desk!
From the type of garden office exterior cladding, to the level of insulation, the doors and the windows; how your garden office looks is completely flexible. If you need a little inspiration for garden office ideas, take a browse below of some of the best of Pinterest and all within our scope. If you want to arrange a viewing of a recent project we have a number of happy customers who are pleased to show off the results of our work.
Our Southend garden offices offer a little bit of extra home for your to enjoy on your property, from down the sideway, to the rear of your home. Stop working hunched over on a bed, or feeling guilty for not letting your cats sit on the keyboard, make the commute down the garden path instead. Working from an outdoor space, brings the realism of a working environment but with the added benefit of more hours of your life to spend with the people and pets you love. Find out more about why a garden office in your Essex home makes sense.
Every project is of course different but as a guideline we advise around £1000 per square metre. This is a guideline, and will vary depending on finishes, types of roofing, door styles, windows, any additional preparation work or salvage needed. We advise that for a practical high spec finish with trimmings, such as decking edging and installing the correct foundations for your needs, look to budget between £12,500-£15,000.
Unlike other prefab operators, we carry out all works, and like to work on garden room projects that want more than just a cube dropped into the ground. From finishing details to advanced roofing styles, we provide a high end result, that is not just practical for multi-use, but affordable too.
A well supported Yopa study in 2020, suggested that adding a garden building can add as much as 5% to the value of a property’s sale price. When you consider the value the additional work-space offers to you – from sanctuary to structure, it’s a fair guess, they offer more than their cost in return.
Source: Yopa
According to HSE the Government Health and Safety Executive requires employers to provide 5 sq metres of desk space per employee. Our smallest garden office builds tend to start around the 3 x 2.5 mark, which means even in the smallest gardens you can create a happy work environment. Better still, no one can steal your Nespresso pods!
As with any build project, there are economies of scale, and if you can comfortably afford some additional space, it means what is an office today, could be spare accommodation or a gym in later years.
Source: HSE
While the building of a garden office itself is not tax deductible according to HMRC, a number of the expenses in heating it, insulating it and running it, are. The outlay is considered a personal capital asset, but there are certainly elements of the build that can be deducted and we can work with your accountant to identify these in the early stages.
Source: HMRC
We know this is a question that is asked a lot on Google. Are garden offices worth it? We may be a little biased, but we are going to say yes on this.
Here’s why…
When you consider the discomfort from working in an uncomfortable working space on your sofa, kitchen table or bed; the impact to your home life with never stopping working and the fact that garden offices are considered to add up to 5% value to your home price, they seem like a no brainer. If you run your own business, that means no more rent each quarter, just a lick of paint and general maintenance once a year or every two years on a sunny day.
Seems like a good idea to us!
Garden offices in Southend and Essex can be built without planning permission or building regulations in most parts of the town and county. Even in the conservation areas of Leigh-on-sea where we have done considerable build work, offices can be built, providing they fall within a permitted size. For conservation areas you tend to see a cap on roof heights of 2.5 m while those built in conventional post codes, are able to go as high as 3-4 metres. Probably higher than you need! We can direct you to local planning regulations we follow to ensure we can meet your needs before a penny is exchanged or a shovel hits the soil.
If you are debating between a garden office vs an extension, then they both serve different purposes. With an extension, the overall build cost tends to be much higher and the time taken to plan, prepare and complete the project can run into many months. On the flip-side, garden offices can be planned and built within a matter of weeks, cost much less and are potentially more efficient with the use of space.
We all know that there are rooms in the house that don’t add as much value as say a kitchen, nice bathroom or bedrooms, and if all the extension is doing is creating a larger room, or a lot more walkway between rooms; the return on investment can be less than the cost.
If all you need is a clear distinct room to work from, but designed to feel like a professional working environment, then a garden office wins in this comparison.
29 Ringwood Dr.
Southend, Essex SS9 5HG
MON-FRI 09:00 – 17:00
SAT-SUN – Office Closed