Major Projects Should You Convert Your Garage?

Date Published:

19/09/2009

Making the garage look less like a conversion and more like a room requires careful planning.

Get The Look Right From Outside

For a well executed finish, keep the palette of materials used on the new frontage to a minimum, matching them to the original house as closely as possible. ‘Avoid “bolting on” the new brickwork as this looks unsightly on the front of a house, and instead ask the builder to fully tooth and bond the new work in. Older garages often contain electric and gas meters and surface mounted pipes in all the wrong places. Consider resiting pipes and meters if boxing them in looks clumsy,’ advises Nigel Lewis.

Get The Look Right Indoors

Assuming you’ve got the proportions of the room right, there are various tricks you can use to make the room feel like it’s always belonged to the rest of the house. The main thing is to match the basic decorative components of the room, in particular to the room it adjoins. So, try your best to find the same flooring, get the same window or door fittings, have skirting made that matches that in the rest of the house, and buy light fittings that not only do justice to the space, but also co-ordinate with those in the rooms beyond.

Choose paint colours and finishes that make the room feel bigger – bearing in mind that most garage conversions are quite small – and make the most of any available daylight by keeping windows uncluttered and by hanging mirrors to reflect light and enlarge the space visually.

Find furniture that matches the proportions of the room, too. It might be that you have to buy smaller pieces so that the room doesn’t feel crowded and cluttered – or look for versatile buys that combine storage within them, too.