Designing Your Conservatory

One of the fundamental requirements and first requests made by people contemplating a conservatory is that they wish to use it THROUGHOUT THE YEAR... not simply a summer room or glorified greenhouse.

This is certainly possible, although those connected with local council authorities may well suggest that anything with a glass or translucent roof is not really suitable for that purpose - obviously those Toadies don't have one!

I have spent many enjoyable evenings, in the depths of winter and well into the early hours, thoroughly enjoying being entertained in customers' or friends' conservatories. The temperature outside was well below freezing, and certainly heating is required - but not very much more than a room within your home, if the conservatory is DESIGNED and CONSTRUCTED to a suitably high specification.

Considerable pleasure will be enjoyed during the darker British days when you may well have lights on in the house and be thinking that our English winters go on forever. Alternatively, during the summer we often have many thoroughly unpleasant days and evenings, when the temperature and general atmosphere is far removed from what we had hoped for at that time of year.

It is PARTICULARLY on these occasions that a conservatory will offer the unique opportunity to sit out in your garden, and continue to have fun with your family, or entertain your friends comfortably, cocooned beneath the PROTECTIVE ENVIRONMENT of a glazed building.

If you have planned a special barbeque, it can proceed with all the fun and pleasure carefully planned, whilst still being held out in your garden.

Plants which you can cultivate and develop will give you tremendous pleasure, and certainly amaze your friends, if you are suitably inspirational. Gone are the days when common or garden geraniums, fuchsias or similar are the only possibilities. You can develop beautiful jasmine, hoya, boranvillia and many others into a breathtaking display, which will outstandingly wash away many of the winter depressions or summer blues, because they will be protected from the uncertainty of our unfortunate English climate.

Add to this a beautifully designed interior, with suitable rugs, cane furniture, ceiling fan and lighting, and your conservatory will provide you with an especially unique atmosphere and environment, that will certainly be the envy of all your friends, and, at the same time, give you an incredible uplift when the weather is not performing as we would all ideally wish.

I have visited conservatories which TOOK MY BREATH AWAY, simply because the owners have used just a little bit of imagination, and, not least of all, appreciated that a unique opportunity now existed for them to create a room which could most certainly never have been achieved in any other part of their home, as a direct consequence of a light, bright, warm and amazing atmosphere offered by the unique glazed structure.

If you want to see 'steam coming from my nostrils', introduce me to one of those unfortunate people who say that conservatories are '...too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter...' They, or their colleagues, have simply requested or had constructed an inappropriately designed building with inferior materials.

Last year I had the privilege to be invited to a special evening which I will never forget. The hosts were entertaining a number of celebrity guests who regularly travel throughout the world and were not to be easily impressed. They had a modest English garden and it was late summer. I arrived later in the evening and the main topic of conversation was how extraordinary it was to be relaxing in an English garden at that time of the year with absolutely no need to put on heavy clothing or ask when was it time to go back inside. The floodlights onto trees within the garden, ornamental pond and fountain just outside plus attractive decor, lighting, colours, candles reflecting in the glass and furniture, created a unique atmosphere, which the guests were thoroughly impressed with.