Adding an orangery to your home is a fantastic way to increase your living space and create a versatile and stylish new room. Light, bright, and affordable, orangeries can be used as dining rooms, social spaces and even kitchens. This gives you a huge variety of options when it comes to styling your brand new space.
If you work from home, or plan to work remotely in the near future, you could consider using your orangery as a home office. Separate from the rest of the house and offering a light, bright workspace, an orangery could make the perfect base for your home-run business.
Orangery vs conservatory
Before you start planning your new home office, you need to know exactly what it is you’ll be adding to your property. As @idealhome says, although the names are frequently used interchangeably, “There are differences between a conservatory, which is largely made of glass, including the roof, and an orangery, which features more brickwork and is a flat-roofed extension with large glass windows and roof light.”
As orangeries generally contain more brickwork than conservatories, they are often better at maintaining a stable temperature. This ensures they’re comfortable in both the summer and winter months and makes them ideal for use as home offices.
Styling your versatile space
Once you’ve decided to turn your orangery into a home office, or built a new extension for the specific purpose of using it as a workspace, you need to furnish it. As your orangery will essentially be a blank canvas, you can design your new office space in any way you like.
One of the best things about orangeries is that their windows provide a huge amount of natural light. Although this is great for your wellbeing and for the look of the space, it’s not quite so helpful when it comes to positioning your desk. Before you begin furnishing the space, try to take note of the parts of the room that get the most direct sunlight. Ideally, you want to keep your desk out of these spots as bright light can make it a lot harder to see your computer screen.
If you’re using the space more as a craft room for a home business, this is less important. In fact, you’ll probably want your work station in the brightest part of the room, so you can see exactly what you’re doing.
Heating and cooling
Although orangeries are generally fairly good at maintaining a stable temperature, you still need to think about how you’re going to heat and cool the space before you set up your office. Computers and other electronics give off a lot of heat, so you might want to think about installing an air conditioning unit for the summer months. For winter, a small wall mounted radiator should be enough to keep the space toasty.
If you’d like to learn more about orangeries and the versatile living space they provide, we can help. Explore our site, or get in touch with a member of our team to find out more.