Cold weather and shorter days are upon us, and if you’re already feeling the need to stay snuggled up indoors, it’s the perfect time to start planning to add an “all-season” room addition to your home. We have lots of sunroom ideas for your home. A sunroom can be designed and built so that you can use it all year long, despite rain, sleet or snow. You’ll stretch your home’s living space – and value – while avoiding cabin fever!
When you open the family room, kitchen, or dining area to a sunroom, it expands the area into a “great room” and provides extra space for entertaining or family activities.
Photo courtesy Pella Windows & Doors
Heating and Cooling
It’s not a sunroom if it doesn’t have a lot of windows, so that makes the orientation to sun and shade an important consideration. For example, a south-facing room is ideal for optimizing natural light and is great in the winter, but you’ll need solutions for keeping the space from becoming uncomfortable on a hot summer day. This might require a cooling solution more sophisticated than a ceiling fan. Energy-efficient windows, a ductless heating/cooling system, and the proper building materials and construction techniques can combine to help your all-season room stay comfortable year-round.
Photo courtesy Andersen Windows
Light and Bright
Energy-efficient windows not only keep the temperature comfortable, but also let the room be as bright as possible on gloomy days when you need it the most. If the sunroom is adjacent to a deck or patio, window panels such as NanaWall can fold open to practically eliminate any separation from the outdoors, yet are strong enough to withstand high winds and seal out driving rain, sleet and snow.
Photos courtesy NanaWall
While natural sunlight will flood the room during the day, expert lighting design is essential for making the room enjoyable at night as well. Creative use of light fixtures is needed for illuminating the space at night without an over-exposed “fish bowl” feeling.
Finishing Touches
Sunrooms can range from very simple, casual spaces to elegantly appointed rooms with cathedral ceilings and the finest finishes. A fireplace is a great choice to add that extra coziness in the winter or take the chill off on a cool spring evening.
Flooring should be a material that resists fading from the amount of sun the room will receive. Tile is a nice flooring choice for a more outdoor or “greenhouse” ambiance, while engineered wood provides the comfort and warmth of a sitting room.
Photo courtesy Marvin Windows
A wet bar with built-in storage, a small under-counter refrigerator, stand-alone icemaker, and a bar sink make the sunroom perfect for settling in for a quiet evening with friends or serving guests when you have a large crowd for holidays or special celebrations.
Adding a new sunroom will treat you to living space you can enjoy throughout the year, even when the weather is at its nastiest. It might even become your favorite room. It’s the type of remodeling project that can also enhance your home value – as long as it’s designed to complement the existing lines of the house and constructed to weather the outdoor elements while providing a great indoor environment, too.
If you’d like to explore the “all-season” possibilities of your home, just give us a call!