Question 1

How much does a garden room actually cost?

Accepted Answer

The table above gives real totals at four common sizes — a 5 × 3 m room comes out at £21,000, VAT included. That is the whole thing: insulated base and foundations, insulated structure, external composite cladding, plastered and painted inside, insulated floor with LVT on top, the full electrical installation and 2 m French doors. It is not a shell price with the base, the electrics and the doors added later. The one thing quoted separately is the armoured cable run from your house consumer unit out to the room, at £50 a metre, because the distance is a site-visit measurement rather than a guess. Our estimator runs the same pricing model we quote from, so you can move the sliders to your size and see a real number in about a minute — no email address, no phone call first.

Question 2

Do I need planning permission for a garden room in Wales?

Accepted Answer

Usually not. Behind the principal elevation of the house, single storey, with eaves no higher than 2.5 m, a garden room in Wales normally falls under permitted development — and unlike England there is no 30 m² planning cap on floor area. The catch is the boundary rule: if any part of the building sits within 2 m of a boundary, the whole structure has to stay under 2.5 m overall. Outbuildings together also can't cover more than half your garden. Conservation areas and AONB land — which covers much of the Gower — are stricter: an outbuilding more than 20 m from the house is capped at 10 m², and nothing is permitted between a side elevation and a side boundary. We check all of this before you commit to anything.

Question 3

Is that different from building regulations?

Accepted Answer

Completely different, and the two get run together constantly. Planning is about height, siting and what the neighbours see. Building regulations are about how it's built, and they turn on floor area rather than height. Under 15 m² is normally exempt. Between 15 and 30 m² it stays exempt if the room sits at least a metre from every boundary, or is built substantially of non-combustible materials. Over 30 m² the regulations apply. None of that assumes anyone is sleeping in it — a garden room with a bed in it is a different conversation. Where regulations do apply we handle the submission and the sign-off, and you get the certificate at handover.

Question 4

Can I really use it in the middle of winter?

Accepted Answer

That is the whole point of the specification. Insulated wall and roof panels, an insulated floor build-up, and an insulated base isolated from ground moisture — so there's no cold bridge at the bottom and no timber sitting in the wet. It is the difference between a garden room and a summerhouse. A summerhouse is a shed with nice windows; you'll stop using it in October. This is built to hold heat, which is why people run them as offices and gyms through the year.

Question 5

What's the electrical specification?

Accepted Answer

Its own consumer unit, five double sockets — one in each corner at low level plus one high behind the TV — internal downlights, external downlights under the front overhang, a dimmer and a two-gang switch, all installed by an approved electrician and certificated. The number of downlights scales with the room: four in a 3 × 3, six in a 5 × 3, eight in a 6 × 4. Two years' guarantee on the electrical installation, ten on the structure.

Question 6

Will it need staining or treating every year?

Accepted Answer

No. The cladding is colour-fast external composite, not stained timber, and there's no timber substructure to rot or steel to rust. It doesn't silver, warp or need re-treating. That's a deliberate choice across everything we build. A structure that needs a weekend of maintenance every spring isn't low-maintenance, whatever the brochure says.

Question 7

How long does it take, and how disruptive is it?

Accepted Answer

Two to four weeks on site depending on size and access, with our own team from start to finish rather than subcontracted crews. Tidy at the end of every day. The longest pole is usually access for the base — we read the levels and the route in at the site visit, and the fixed quote reflects what we found, so it doesn't move afterwards.

Service	Specification standard	Guide price (inc VAT)
3 × 3 m	9 m² — insulated base, structure, cladding, plastered and painted, LVT floor, electrics and 2 m French doors	£15,600 inc VAT
4 × 3 m	12 m² — insulated base, structure, cladding, plastered and painted, LVT floor, electrics and 2 m French doors	£18,500 inc VAT
5 × 3 m	15 m² — insulated base, structure, cladding, plastered and painted, LVT floor, electrics and 2 m French doors	£21,000 inc VAT
6 × 4 m	24 m² — insulated base, structure, cladding, plastered and painted, LVT floor, electrics and 2 m French doors	£27,700 inc VAT

Insulated Garden Roomsin Swansea & South Wales

Insulated base

Insulated structure

External composite cladding

Finished inside

Electrics

Guarantee

Every build, as standard.

Guide prices, honestly.

Answered straight, before you ask.

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