Enhance your home with a timber conservatory

If you have a growing family a conservatory can be a wonderful space between the home and the garden where young children can play without dragging dirt inside to carpeted rooms.

If you have young children you will need to check that toughened safety glass is used at lower levels to avoid accidental damage and breakage. As your children grow older the conservatory can become a space where they can do homework, play music and invite their friends.

And with the right design and furnishings, your conservatory can quickly revert to a room where older members of the family can enjoy themselves when the children have gone to bed.

A kitchen conservatory makes a great extension to a home as the kitchen is often the place where the family congregate. Trouble is that very often the kitchen is too small to accommodate all the appliances you need, tables, seating and people milling about. So to stop your kitchen looking and sounding like Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour, add a conservatory and extend the space.

Open plan kitchen conservatory extensions can provide the focal part of the home. With sufficient space to include a dining area large enough for families to spend quality time together and where they can talk about school, work or the wonders of the world; close enough to mum cooking indoors...or dad's BBQ outside!

Alternatively, you may be looking for a room that will allow you some peace and quiet to relax in, away from the family, the TV, music and noise.

Separating the conservatory from the rest of the house by well-insulated single or double doors can help you create an oasis of calm and tranquillity, especially if you have garden views or further landscapes to enjoy.

Add a few indoor plants - as conservatories were originally designed for - and you will have a space that is ideal to relax in, alone or with friends. Make it a place to relax with a coffee in the morning or something stronger when the sun goes down.

Conservatories make a great dining room and spaces where you can entertain friends.

At lunchtimes you'll have created an al fresco dining area you can use all year round. In the evenings you can dine under the moon and the stars with just their light and candles to illuminate the space. The soft lighting and intimate atmosphere will help conversation and the wine flow late into the night.

In summer you can use an adjacent patio or deck area to enjoy an aperitif or post-dinner drinks. In winter with the appropriate insulation materials, double glazing and heating will let you entertain even on the coldest days.

Appropriate lighting fixtures are an important consideration especially if you plan to dine or entertain at night.

If you work from home either permanently, or for a few days each week, finding a suitable place to work in undisturbed can be difficult. Often home offices are consigned to a converted small bedroom or box room, but access to them through the house is not always suitable if you have visitors.

However, with the right design a conservatory as a home office creates a great space that is separated from the rest of the home, domestic noise, children and other disruptions! Visitors, if you have them, can enter via the garden and not directly through the house and you can take a break during the day with a walk in the garden, or just take the phone outside to chat.

Timber is a fantastic material to build conservatories in, especially oak which is strong and one of the most beautiful building materials known to man; the preferred hardwood of British builders and architects for centuries.

Richmond Oak design and build bespoke conservatories, orangeries & garden rooms, in naturally seasoned oak, by craftsmen using traditional skills. All the oak used for our conservatories has been naturally seasoned; felled and stacked, allowed to dry naturally for 9-36 months, depending upon thickness, before it is glued together and then machined into the shapes and sizes required. The result is superior in every way to the more usual green (unseasoned), which will warp and split when natural weathering occurs. Sometimes this is now called 'air dried' oak.