Would you put a garden room on the sunny or shady(er) side

Jul 03, 2024 Last reply: 2 years ago 3 Replies

We've been considering adding a timber garden room since pre covid. We don't have a lot of options given the garden is about 7m wide x 14m long, it will essentially go "at the bottom" but whether it's left or right and the orientation is up for grabs.



Primary usage will be home office, cum-yoga-studio-cum-sleepover-den (incidental overnight use only of course). Would be great if it could be useful 80%+ of the year. Depending how big we go for, an integrated store may be included for tools (DIY and garden), various leftover paints and chemicals, garden furniture etc.



The garden: The left side, especially the bottom corner is fairly shaded by the neighbouring house and en-block garages, and has a different feel based on season (drab and wet in winter, light shade in summer). By contrast, the right side gets good sun, the soil is usually dry to the point of cracking in summer and currently hosts a row of raspberries which don't seem to mind. Clay soil and (neighbours') conifer roots to deal with too.



We are stuck deciding which side to put the structure. The existing shed is on the shady side but has been placed with a good 1.2m around it so it's quite "out" in the garden. Of unknown age it seems to have lasted well. It's hard to visualise anything other than replacing this with the new building, keeping the existing overall footprint but going back towards the borders so we lose no garden from the current position. I'm thinking without much sun it may succumb to damp and other issues associated. On the other hand it will be great in the heat of summer. All 3 days of that.



Putting it on the sunny side will be generally brighter, and will get baked whenever the sun is out. But it's (in my opinion) more in the line of sight from the house but it's hard to visualise since that's currently the open side. It does mean we could put a paved eating area on the shadier side, which would not likely be used outside of summer anyway.


I would finish all the other jobs first.

Build a 7m wide building, and decision averted :-)

It sounds like your garden faces west? Any fences or trees to occlude the sky?

In the UK the sun forms a low sweep across the southern sky in winter. In summer the sun is slightly in the north but you don't really notice that component except at dawn and dusk, most of the sunlight is nearer to vertical.

So the question is: which season do you want the sunlight, and is it better to have in on the shed or on the flowerbeds? Do you want the sun in the windows or on the patio outside (given the shed will cast its own shadow)?

Usually people like south facing windows to capture light and solar heat in the winter when it's cold. In the summer the sun can be too hot, and the solution for that is overhangs so the almost-vertical sun doesn't come in south facing windows to cause overheating (more fashionably a 'brise soleil' on the windows but an old fashioned pitched roof overhang is often better).

However it'll also be determined by the site: if you have a fence on your southern boundary then you can't have south facing windows, and you'd need to move the building to the north of the site so you can have windows pointing south to get the winter sun. Similarly you might find the foot of your northerly fence is the place where things grow best because they get sun from about midday to sunset.

If you want sunlight, another option is roof lights - but think of how to cover them up in the summer as otherwise they risk overheating (better to have external covering than internal blinds).

As I think you like data, you could have a play with:

formatting link
For your specific location it gives you a plot of inclination and azimuth (ie compass bearing) at the solstices and at equinox. Gives you an idea of how the sun will behave in different seasons.

(It'll also give you generation numbers for solar panels in different configurations, in case that's of interest - but also useful as a proxy for how much sunlight you'd get into windows at the same angles)

Theo

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required