The Perfect Place to Paint

The Perfect Place to Paint

Penny bought her beautiful home in a small Cotswolds village in 2020 and inherited a large PVC conservatory on the rear of her home. The conservatory was in need of updating, both to improve the aesthetics, and also to create a more consistent year-round temperature, as Penny explained: “The old conservatory was baltic-cold in the winter and roasting hot in the summer - AND very unstylish. I wanted to create a room that retained lots of light coming in, but felt warm, and part of the house rather than a bolted-on afterthought.”

After speaking to her local Ultraframe installer, Fox Windows, the perfect design was settled on to transform the dated conservatory into a modern, light-filled extension that was every bit as warm as the rest of Penny’s home. Keeping the existing footprint, brick pillars were erected at the front of the structure along with a large set of French doors. The main change though, in updating this conservatory into a modern, energy efficient extension, was the roof. An Ultraframe Livinroof was chosen as the perfect solution to the brief for lots of light thanks to its hybrid style of solid glazed panels and full length glazed panels. Livinroof can be used to replace any shape or size of conservatory roof and delivers a solid plastered ceiling on the interior with full length glazed panels where needed – both to flood the room below with light, and also add a dramatic wow factor. Livinroof also offers outstanding energy efficiency as it is a true warm roof system with no cold bridging. With a thermally insulated internal pelmet as standard (which further adds to the ‘room-like’ feel) and thermally broken rafters, Livinroof offers unrivalled thermal performance and U-Values as low as 0.15.

Penny’s daughter is an artist who uses the space daily as a studio and so the brief for lots of natural light was hugely important on this project. 3 times more natural light comes into an extension via the roof than the windows or doors, and so Fox Windows included a large number of the glazed panels into the roof to ensure the room below was filled with natural light. The number of glazed panels not only meant that the brief was met, but also that the room has a beautiful bright ambience.

The resulting new extension is a stunning light-filled space that is open plan to the kitchen and is used for dining, relaxing to watch TV, and of course, as an art studio. The pillars and the new Livinroof have transformed the old conservatory into a modern space that offers a consistent year-round temperature and is a stunning addition to this charming period home.

Commenting about the transformation from old conservatory to modern extension, Penny said: “We now have a fabulous garden room that feels like part of the house, has lots of light coming in, and is warm and cosy in the winter. The new extension has a modern, clean look to it which is exactly what I wanted and I’m so happy it doesn’t leak like the old conservatory did! The customer service from Fox Windows was very good and I liked the options they offered me to transform the old conservatory into this wonderful new space. We use it as a dining room, TV snug room and art studio - we love it!”