Guide To Choosing Garden Room Cladding

The biggest impact on your garden studio’s appearance and durability will be the type of material you choose for the exterior cladding. Therefore, it is important that you choose a cladding that will provide you with the assurance and longevity that you expect while being aesthetically pleasing and enhancing your garden.

Fortunately, there is a large array of materials to choose from. Some are popular for their high levels of durability, and others because they require very little maintenance. Some cladding options provide a more natural appearance and have more sustainable credentials, whereas others provide colour and a more contemporary look.

To help you choose what will suit your needs and preferences best, Urban Escapes has put together this guide to garden room cladding. Read about the options you can choose from so that you can choose your cladding with confidence.

Garden Room Cladding Options

Let’s explore some of the cladding options that are available when purchasing a garden room.

Cedar Cladding

If you are interested in buying a garden room and have already started your research, then you will notice that cedar cladding is the most widely available and by far the most popular style of cladding.

Due to its cost, most garden room suppliers offer Cedar as an upgrade premium option. This is due to its natural durability against fungal attack and rot and appealing natural reddish-brown colouring. Cedar grows slowly in cold climates and therefore creates stunning fine, straight grains, generally with few knots that give it it’s sought-after character.

Cedar normally has a long maintenance-free lifespan of 25 years plus. That is, if the cedar is left to age naturally to its infamous silver grey. If you wish to keep the reddish-brown colouring, then you will need to have a UV oil applied and keep it regularly applied. Whilst the colour changes do not affect the durability of the wood cladding, it substantially changes the look and feel of the building.

Thermowood Cladding

Thermowood is a heat-treated pine softwood. The wood is treated at temperatures in excess of 200 degrees, where chemical and structural changes occur in the wood. The heating breaks down hemicellulose so that the wood doesn’t contain the appropriate nutrients to allow rot and fungi to grow and develop, making it highly durable and stable and an excellent exterior cladding option. This kind of heat treatment significantly increases the cladding’s lifespan providing an estimated 30-year lifespan.

Most painted garden rooms which you will see will be Thermowod which has had paint or stain applied. If left uncoated to expose the grain and knots, it will start to go silvery grey.

Thermowood is also highly versatile, allowing both vertical and horizontal applications which can be cut and shaped to fit a wide range of designs or styles.

Larch Cladding

Costing significantly less than Cedar but offering similar long-term natural durability, Larch has been rising in popularity recently. These slow-growing trees create a nice straight grain with fewer knots than Thermowood and offer a more golden colour than Cedar.  delivers a beautiful colouring and texture, and the shapes and patterns of the growth rings give a very beautiful and natural appearance.

To begin with, Larch is a pale yellow/golden brown in colour but will weather to a striking silvery grey if left to age naturally without affecting the durability of the wood. However, you can keep its original golden colour by treating and staining it if you prefer. Any coatings applied can be purely for appearance as its natural durability means no treatment of the timber is required as its inherent properties create high resistance to decay and rot.

Composite Cladding

If you are looking for a low-maintenance option, then composite cladding may be the best option for you. There are two types of composite cladding: Cement fibre board and composite wood cladding.

Composite Wood Cladding

Composite wood is made using a combination of FSC-certified timber & recycled high-density polyethene plastics, giving an exceptionally low-maintenance cladding which is rot free but highly environmentally friendly. The real wood fibres and resins create a tough, dimensionally stable product. You will see in the market there is a range of textured looks to give a real feel and look of timber wood. It is also available in a range of colours, including black and anthracite giving a very contemporary and stylish look to garden rooms. This type of cladding has the colour pigment added during manufacturing, and therefore the boards retain their colour and won’t need repainting.

Composite cladding improves insulation and has incredible heat retention, effectively reducing energy bills.

Cement Fibre Boards

These cement board sheets are manufactured from a mixture of cement and fibres creating a hard, dimensionally stable board. The boards are pre-coloured and have a wood grain surface. Like with compost wood cladding, the colour pigment is added during production, so you won’t have to repaint, making them a very low-maintenance cladding option with a range of colours available, depending on the supplier.

If you are going to be locating a garden room within one meter of a boundary, cement board cladding is also ideal due to its low fire rating. This option also can provide either smooth boards or a more rural corrugated board and can be used on the sides and rear walls with a more expensive finish like Cedar on the front wall. These boards are often painted in dark grey or black masonry paint.

Note: Due to the rising popularity of this cladding, you may find you experience some delays in the material being sourced, and due to its heavier weight, this type of cladding needs multiple people to install it, which may impact your quote.

Metal Claddings

Metal is another ideal external cladding option for those seeking a virtually no to low maintenance option. This powder-coated aluminium is growing in popularity and offers a leather-like grain on the surface. To create a sleek appearance, the panels are often colour-matched with the door and window frames, and people often clad part of the building in it for durability and combine it with a timber clad such as Cedar too.

Metal cladding is remarkably strong and highly resilient to water damage and corrosion, making it one of the most durable cladding options available, boasting a very impressive long lifespan. It is often made with post-consumer recycled materials, making them environmentally friendly and reducing the amount of material that goes to landfill.

However, it is worth noting that these sheets are coated in manufacturing to protect them from the elements, but when they are cut to size, the edges aren’t re-coated, leaving them exposed and vulnerable to rust. You may also find the colour fading over time due to factors such as UV light, harsh weather, pollutants and moisture in the air.

Render Finishes

There are a select few garden room suppliers who offer the whole garden room in render or part of it as a design feature. It is a strong, flexible and weather-resistant material that has a wide variety of uses. This material traditionally consists of a mixture of cement, water and sand, but more recently, other compositions have been used, including glass fibres and acrylics, to improve the structural durability of the render.

Acrylic and silicone renders are most commonly used as the resins in the mixes help repel moisture, so they are less likely to stain or crack. A crisp, clean white render is the most common option, but you may find some suppliers who will colour-match the render with the doors and roof trims or combine vivid colours, such as orange, with Cedar cladding for a striking look.

A rendered exterior will cost much more than wood claddings in the initial quote. However, due to its minimal maintenance and durability, you will have fewer ongoing maintenance costs to worry about in the long run.

Slate & Brick Cladding

Another more contemporary option for cladding is slate, and it is quite commonly used in combination with timber cladding. Feature walls made out of slate tiles of different thicknesses and sizes create a very aesthetically appealing and premium look with an interesting, tactile finish.

Combined with Cedar walls, the palette of grey hues pairs perfectly with anthracite doors and windows and provides a stunning contrast against the texture of Cadar. A brick slip system is also another more recent cladding option which has the colouring and texture of real bricks but is quicker to install than building a traditional wall, decreasing install times and lowering labour costs. Slate, brick and stone cladding options will undoubtedly provide higher levels of insulation, which can lower heating and cooling costs.

They can be scratch and abrasion resistant, as well as offering high levels of weather and fire resistance. These materials, especially slate, can be more expensive than other cladding products. If they are not installed correctly, there could also be moisture trapped behind the material if poorly installed, which could damage the stone.

Shou Sugi Ban

This is a traditional Japanese method in which timbers such as larch have the surface of a board charred with a flame torch. This process helps protect the wood from fungal and insect attacks. A wire brush is used to remove the excess char, and the result is a beautiful appearance which shows the grain of the wood.

The Shou Sugi Ban process is environmentally friendly and doesn’t contribute to harmful pollution. There are no chemicals present in this cladding to potentially leak into the environment. Shou Sugi Ban is a sustainable means of naturally protecting exterior siding and, once its lifespan has been reached, can be recycled or disposed of without any concern of harming the environment, like one might have when disposing of treated wood.

Conclusion on Garden Office and Room Cladding

As you can see, there’s a wide range of cladding options available to suit a range of needs and environments. Due to aesthetics, inherent durability, and sustainable properties we at Urban Escapes have specifically included Cedar, Shou Sugi Ban, and our exclusive ToughWood composite cladding for our garden room ranges.

Your decision will likely depend on budget, style preferences, location within your garden and what you intend to use your garden room for. That said, you are now equipped with everything you need to know about the cladding planks available for your outdoor space.

If you have any questions on cladding types or wish to hear about the cladding which we use on our Urban Escape Studios, then please contact us at 01273208776 | [email protected]