Creative ways to clad your garden room
Published: 11 July 2023
Guest Post by: Dura Composites
Reading Time: 2 minutes 19 seconds
A garden room can be a great focal point for your outdoor space, but central to its success is the style of cladding you choose and how you want it to look now and in the future.
Cladding designs have the power to transform an exterior into a visually dynamic and engaging element. By experimenting with different orientations and materials, you can break up dull walls, create transitions between different areas, and add texture and character to the structure. Here are some techniques to enhance your cladding designs.
Colour combinations
Colour is a powerful design tool, and can easily be applied to garden room cladding. Colour can be used to create a visual hierarchy. Using darker cladding shades gives the illusion of the building receding into its setting, whilst lighter shades help the structure to achieve greater prominence against your garden planting scheme. Using two contrasting colours on the same garden room can also create a visual illusion, creating a sense of depth and dimension on an otherwise flat facade. This can also help draw attention to specific architectural features, such as doorways or windows.
Experiment with materials
The material of the cladding you choose can have a large impact on the final design of your garden room. More earthy materials like wood, or wood composite create a warm and inviting feel, whereas heavier materials such as aluminium or other metals gives a sleek, more industrial end result. Different materials have varying textures, so you could even use two (or more) to create a unique, textural cladding design.
Similarly to colour choices, the material of cladding can either contrast the surroundings of the build, or help it blend smoothly with the rest of the garden. You may choose to use materials that complement the composition of your home or create a design that stands out completely from the other architectural features such as pergolas or awnings.
Arranging orientations
A wonderful design perk of today’s modern cladding is that it can be installed both horizontally and vertically. This allows for a wealth of creativity when it comes to creating patterns or areas of focus.
Some garden rooms will lend themselves to a particular orientation of cladding. For a long, wide facade, vertical cladding can visually reduce its perceived width, creating a more balanced composition. Comparably, a garden room with a taller design is likely to benefit from horizontal cladding, helping to break up the height of the structure.
Instead of choosing two colours of cladding to emphasise different areas of the garden room, you may choose to simply change the orientation of the cladding instead. Perhaps the cladding around the doorframe and window frames is placed vertically, whilst the rest is horizontal to create a clear divide between the elements. This contrast between horizontal and vertical lines is eye-catching, creating a strong visual impact.
Create the design of your dreams
Cladding is not solely intended for protection and insulation purposes, it also gives you the opportunity to get creative with the exterior of your garden room. Although the interior purpose of the structure is usually what compels homeowners to invest in a garden room, the exterior is equally as important to get just right.
The right cladding choice will ensure you can achieve a garden room that is visually appealing, complements your home well and acts as much more than just an extension of space.
Lee Cavalier is decking and cladding product manager at Dura Composites.
