What do you use your conservatory for?

[MrSoft]

I've never had one before and trying to work out what to put where in my new house

It has a kitchen diner with the conservatory off of the dining section

I was going to turn the conservatory into a small sitting room/playroom for the kids but thinking about it I could also make it a dining room as I could fit a much larger table into it than I could in the kitchen diner

If I did that what would I use the walk through/dining section of the kitchen for?

I'm so confused!

I think it depends a lot of the orientation of your garden, how much sun the conservatory will get etc. We had one as children which was used as a dining room and lead out to my parents south facing garden. It was freezing cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. I would suggest living in the house a bit and seeing what the conservatory is like before making any bigger decisions like buying furniture for it. Many pictures of us on Christmas Day in scarfs and dressing gowns over our clothes sat at the dining table!

That's a really good idea, if it's freezing in the winter I can't see us using it that much. It has a radiator in there but are they really quite hard to keep warm?

We got ours insulsted so use it year round as a clothes drying space

Do you mean a cosy roof type thing?

Mine was lovely during the day in winter, so long as it was sunny! At night it turned into a giant fridge.

I used it during the day as a family room. It was lovely; I didn't use it at night as it was cold and all that glass wasn't very cosy.

I never found it unbearably hot though, ever.

We had the choice and it seemed a waste for the dinning and a nightmare if the heating was forgotten about and in the summer we would eat outside. Ours is a sitting room but now also a lightweight tiled roof. Miss the Christmas alcohol fridge that are conservatory once was though.

We use it to watch TV. Have thermal blinds and an electric heater. It struggles a bit when freezing but fine tonight. If DC were younger it would be a playroom I guess.

Ours is east facing, so is used for a breakfast room in the summer.

It gets incredibly hot in the late morning to mid afternoon, especially this past summer-but we have aircon in there, which was a godsend. By mid-afternoon it goes into shade, so is still pleasantly warm in the evening for evening meals.

It does get incredibly cold in the winter, but our aircon is also a heater, so it can be used, and in fact we have used it several times for Christmas dinners, which works really well, as you can still use the rest of the house and confine eating to the "extra room". We regularly manage to get between 9-12 people in there for dinner, and also use it for meetings of a local charity we are involved in.

I find ours really useful, but we obviously get most use out of it in the summer. The cats also like to have long leisurely naps in there in the Spring and Autumn, but not so much in summer /winter.

Ours was a second sitting room but seems to have been taken over with the kids playmobil and usually an upside down dog sunbathing on the sofa in there.

We had it as a dining room at one point but it wasn't really working well because it was a bit of palava moving plates from the kitchen through into it.

Long term I'll reclaim it as a craft room or a home office setup once I ever evict 9million small plastic children, two schools, a cruise ship, shopping mall and hospital.

We bought a house with an old conservatory off the kitchen. It had all the above problems and became a dumping ground for kids garden toys and shoes.
We knocked it down and built a huge, glass bay window with a French door, off the dining room. The bay window was built so that it was part of the room with no doors separating it from the room. There were building calculations that had to be done, re the size before it was not classed as an extension or conservatory, where different building regs would apply.
Alough on paper the floor plan didn’t look massive, it gave us loads more extra room and a lovely view of the garden.

We were using ours as a kids toy room but they never played in it and it was always a mess.
So we’ve changed it into a craft room for them because that’s what they are doing most with their time. It’s only been a few says but they seem happy with it.
Bloody Baltic in the morning though!

Ours is off the kitchen, so we use it as the dining room / family room (it’s quite big). There’s just a large arch between the kitchen and conservatory so it’s more like an extension to the kitchen than a separate room. The actual dining room we use as the study/library and the actual study we use as a playroom.

Mine is a dining room, we had a tiled roof put on it and uts warm in winter now and looks lovely.

@EdisonLightBulb did you have to check your foundations to do the tiled roof or did you not need building regs?

@Bluebolt was a lightweight roof expensive?

Has anyone insulated theirs from the inside?!

Looking for the cheapest but most practical option to making ours usable all year round! Might make mine a dining area like you @MrSoft! Sorry for hijacking your post!

Ours has had a new insulated and plastered ceiling with spotlights put on. It’s also got carpet and two large radiators. It’s currently a second living room / playroom for the children and they eat at their table in there. It’s a big space and I love it. The roof has transformed it. Lovely and warm and cosy in the winter cooler in the summer with no glare. You can’t hear the rain on the roof anymore
The roof was inspected by building regulators and the council have issued a building control certificates

Meant to add the roof is a timber frame with several layers of insulation and then tiled with mock roof slates to match existing main roof ones

It started as a playroom., Full.of toys. Complete riot but we could shut the door when ds went to bed..house was tidy.
Now he is a teenager it has a sky box Xbox phone charger etc.
It means ds has somewhere to hang with his friends ..I can still keep an eye and his bedroom is purely for sleeping in

if you use your conservatory as a dining room you could put a sofa/seating area in your kitchen.

Yours is through double doors off kitchen/ dining. We use it as a casual sitting area from April to October. It has double doors to the garden so open all Summer. We have a table in there where the dcs did jigsaws/ games / art stuff etc which hadn't to be moved at dinner time. Also some couches and small tables.We love that room. It has lovely views of the garden and is a very relaxing bright spot.
We don't use much in Winter as have an open fire in another room. But l can bring pots in off the patio to keep frost free.

@Eatmycheese so it’s got mock roof skates on the outside? So it’s a lightweight roof? Do you mind me asking how much it cost you to do?? Sounds perfect.

*slates!!

The roof replacement was £5k approx (had other work done) and is 3.5 X 3 metres. Only did it because the conservatory was still in very good condition. It seems different councils have different building reg rules. Ours required BR but was not expensive.

What Frank said in first reply.
We use ours mainly for storage and for drying washing.

Mine is my kitchen. It’s an ultra high spec oak orangery with a glass roof and under floor heating. If you want to use such a Building year round, and obviously we do, high spec glazing and heating is vital. If you don’t have this, demolish it and build what you will use. No point in having useless space. Cheap conservatories really are useless I’m afraid.

Dining room. It works well for this IF you have an eating place in the kitchen day to day, and you have enough of a heater in there to really warm it up occasionally, for Sundays/guests. In summer, if it's a hot day and the conservatory is boiling you'll probably want to eat outside anyway.

This works well for us and means we can use the old dining room as a playroom day in, day out.