Once a garage always a garage?

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We're thinking of putting an offer in on a house which has converted the single garage to a study. Whilst we love the house we're really 'iffy' on this one room; it's long and skinny (17.6 ft x 8.2) and very much 'feels' like a garage despite it being insulated, carpeted and with a proper window at the bottom. I'm wondering whether this room will always feel like a converted garage or whether the vendors have just been particularly rubbish at making the most of the space (to be fair it is very much a study/junk room). If we go for the house, we may use it as a study or use it as a guest room and try to install a small bathroom at the top end of the room (so it has a bit of a hotel layout ifswim).

Advice from anyone who's got a conversion would be appreciated :)

This month's Real Homes magazine has a feature on garage conversions. We don't have one (bear with me!) but the article mentions it's a good idea to put something like a bathroom or small study or storage at the back of the garage, to 'square off' the main room and improve the proportions.

I can totally see how this would work, otherwise, yes, difficult to get the garage shape out of your head!

Hope this is a bit helpful anyway.

Anywhere near the kitchen perchance?
I'd make it into a utility/boot room...drool.

We converted a double garage but went to a lot of effort to make it look like it was part of the house and not a converted garage. ie we didn't just fill in the space left by the garage door with a window and brickwork. We actually matched the window sizes to the other windows at the front of the house so they are all matching.

Plus inside we retained the back of the garage as a store, meaning the builders put up a wall for us with a door so we can access this store from the house or still from the back as it already had a door to the garden.

I think by putting a wall up to make a "store" or utility or something would make the room feel less like a converted garage. My double garage is a playroom for the children.

Does it matter, extra space is hugely useful in any shape or form.

My pantry, store room is clearly just the old passage way at the side of the house with a roof. My old utility was where some one had knocked through into the serious brick built store many old council houses have. Neither are very pretentious, but both very useful.

We've got a house where the single garage has been converted to a room. Think ours is 15'9 by 8'5 or thereabouts. We use it as an office / spare bedroom and it's a big enough room to do both effectively. Very handily located as well since overnight or more long term guests are right next to the downstairs toilet.

Thanks for the replies and especially the magazine hint Concrete - I'll definitely try to get a copy of that! It's good to know it can be done so that it loses it's garage-y feel. I agree Potterer that it's important to match window sizes with the rest of the house and they've actually done a good job with that... I couldn't tell before we viewed it, that it had been a garage as it's been blended really well with the rest of the house.

Although we were initially thinking study, I'm more inclined to think guest room with a bathroom as it sounds like that would work well with the proportions. This house very luckily already has a utility and three other reception rooms so we can be quite choosy with what we do with it. Making it a bedroom comes with the added bonus of leaving us with a 16 x 14ft master suite instead of chopping it up to create a master and a small guest room which I am more than happy with :D

We bought a house where the integrated garage had been converted to a (long, thin) study by the previous owner, who'd also replaced the garage door with a very large window. We've just converted one end to a shower room, leading off our utility room (which used to be a downstairs bathroom). It's left us with a reasonable-sized, square study at the front of the house, and we also replaced the huge window with one the same size and shape as the bedroom above it. Not obvious now that it used to be a garage.

We've got a downstairs room which used to be a garage. The previous owners have done it to a good standard but did replace the garage door wit a bit of brickwork and a big window. What's weird is that, from the outside, I think it's really obvious that it used to be a garage (especially as it sticks out form the front of the house) but from inside I forget. We use it as a guest bedroom and use our (very small) 4th bedroom as a study - this works best for us, although we did consider using it as a study. So i guess I don;t really go in there very often.
I think you can make it feel un-garage like by changing the windows and placing furniture and pictures strategically.