A Garden Room Glazed on Three Sides

The house is a red-brick Victorian semi with a long, narrow rear garden — the kind of plot where an extension either steals the light or gives it back. This one gives it back.

The new garden room is built in matching brick with a pitched, clay-tiled roof, but between the piers there is almost nothing but glass. Two bifold runs — four panels on one elevation, five on the return — fold back to open the corner completely onto the paved terrace.

Brick piers carry the roof so the glazing never has to. That is what allows the bays to run full height with slim jet black frames, and it is why the room reads as masonry and glass rather than a conservatory.

RAL 9005 jet black was chosen to sit against the warm red brick and the dark rainwater goods. Frames, cills, handles and the door and window set all match, so the eye follows one continuous dark line around the building.

Rooflights in the gable bring light down into the middle of the plan, where a rear extension would normally go dark. The film shows it best in the overhead pass: sun through the roof glazing, then the corner of bifolds standing open onto the terrace.