Living the Sustainable Life

LIVING THE SUSTAINABLE LIFE – Eco-Friendly Garden Rooms

Living sustainably improves the quality of all our lives, much like the benefits and joys of owning a luxury garden room. We’ve worked with countless people to bring their contemporary garden building dreams to life in a sustainable way – designing eco-friendly garden rooms offering physical space to grow into, and head space you can’t put a price on.

We’re sharing some of our eco-friendly designs for inspiration, along with the materials and approaches we use. The result? Distinctive and contemporary eco-friendly garden rooms, for unique people, with individual special touches.

Why is Sustainability Important?

We all play a role in protecting the earth for ourselves and future generations; the air we breathe, our natural resources and our wider ecosystem. Our environmentally friendly garden rooms allow you to reimagine and make space for a more sustainable way of living.

ECO-FRIENDLY GARDEN ROOMS

We’re passionate about the environment and nature; it’s what makes the allure of a garden room so special. Garden rooms make the most of the outdoors, creating a relaxing sanctuary and sense of wellbeing – something that deserves to be protected. As a design-led team, we thrive on creating eco-friendly garden rooms that allow people be at one with nature in a way that also works to preserve it.

Our garden rooms are built using beautiful, contemporary, durable and sustainable materials. Energy efficient and sustainably sourced, they allow us to create luxury eco-friendly garden rooms that don’t ‘cost the earth’.

Most of our eco-friendly design approaches and features are used across the board, with plenty of optional extras to take your dream of a more sustainable way of living a step further.

Eco-Friendly Foundations

We use giant ground screws for all our garden rooms; they’re a great sustainable alternative to concrete. They ensure a strong and level foundation, offer a lower carbon alternative, use fewer resources and work in better harmony with the environment.

According to the Great British Ground Screw Company, a 4m x 5m timber garden room requires a minimum of 1 tonne of cement, producing 1.25 tonnes of embedded carbon. The same size garden room requires 16 ground screws (weighing only 8.5kg), producing only 244.8kg of embedded carbon.

Reclaimed Wood

We admire the unique and timeless look of reclaimed wood – one of our high-quality cladding options. Our customers love it too, with around 60% of people choosing to use it. Lucy and Mark in Weybridge feature it both inside and outside of their beautiful eco-friendly garden room.

The reclaimed wood we use is between 50 and 150 years old, with each plank salvaged and restored by master craftsmen at the Main Company. It is kiln dried before their experts lovingly and painstaking ensure every piece is restored and finished to the highest of standards. They work to preserve and enhance characterful features such as original saw marks, nail holes and the patina of the wood (which can take hundreds of years to form – resulting in rich and unique depths of colour).

Sustainable Timber

As well as offering reclaimed wood, we use only certified managed timber for all our garden rooms. Our timber is sourced from responsibly managed forests independently certified in accordance with UK rules and regulations, giving you peace of mind that your dream garden room is not contributing to unsustainable deforestation.

Eco-friendly Decking

We use Millboard decking, the first outdoor flooring company in the world to have its carbon footprint independently verified and UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service) accredited.

Made using recycled fillers and biopolymers, Millboard decking has a low carbon footprint. There’s no pressure on the world’s hardwood forests and it lasts longer, which results in energy savings from not having to replace decks every few years (unlike softwood). It also supports biodiversity as there’s no need for toxic chemicals (such as wood stain) to maintain it.

We particularly love how it provides a sustainable drainage system. It manages stormwater in ways that are closer to nature; returning surface water to the ground more-or-less where it lands, just as it would have if there were no ‘surface’. The result is a safe, secure and porous surface that doesn’t place additional pressures on existing local drainage systems.

The subframe the decking sits on (Plas Pro) is made from 100% recycled plastic joists and beams. This all-weather, durable and flexible material is a practical alternative to timber and perfectly suited to spaces exposed to damp.

Millboard decking is exclusively manufactured in the UK, unlike imported hardwood or composite decking. This results in fewer transport carbon emissions (the company also uses lightweight, recyclable packaging).

Protecting Trees

We’ve got experience working around tricky environments like trees and protected areas. Our eco-friendly design-led approach results in quirky and creative design features that knit in beautifully with the surrounding area.

Green Roofs

Green roofs promote biodiversity in gardens and are a haven for wildlife, particularly for bees which are incredibly important in our ecosystem. They blend in perfectly with the surroundings and provides an additional layer of insulation, helping to keep the garden room cool in the summer and warm in the winter – reducing power required for heating/air-conditioning.

Sustainable Wood Flooring

Our wood flooring is sourced from eco-conscious Direct Wood Flooring. It’s sustainably sourced and either PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) or FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified.

Direct Wood Flooring plant a tree for every square metre of flooring sold to help reduce CO². Since August 2020, they’ve planted 3,579,083 and rainforest protection funded 25,090 acres of rainforest.

‘Green’ Insulation

We use BRE (Building Research Establishment) Green Guide ‘A’ Rating Insulation (Celotex XR4000) in our Garden Rooms, giving you environmental assurance and first-class energy efficiency. Combined with our approach of making the very best use of sun and natural light, you can use your new eco-friendly space all year round.

Eco Interiors

Your green-living ambitions don’t stop here; we can introduce you to our trusted partners in interior and garden design for even more eco-friendly ideas. Reclaimed wood furniture and pre-loved retro, or antique furniture – the options are endless to create the look you’re going for, in a sustainable way.

CHANGING THE WAY YOU LIVE

Our passion for great design and enthusiasm for eco-friendly garden rooms bring your sustainable-living aspirations to life, creating a space you can enjoy and be proud of for years to come.

Whether you’re in need of an environmentally friendly garden office, yoga studio, music room, pool house or teenage hangout, we get under the skin of what you’re looking to achieve and present you with the best possible garden room design ideas. The result is a dream space that feels like a natural extension of your home and is meaningful to the way you want to live.