How to Get the Most Out of Your Sunroom

Friday, December 12th, 2014 by Danny Peterson

We’ll get right to the point: If you’re going to do something as wonderful and as extreme as adding a whole new room to your house—if you’re going to add a sunroom, in particular—you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of it. A sunroom, after all, can be a tremendous investment in the overall value of your home. It can be a comfortable and luxurious room, perfect for year-round lounging, entertaining, and family gathering. Can be. But none of that is guaranteed. If you want to really get bang for your buck—if you really want a sunroom that delivers on all of your loftiest expectations—then you need to do some careful planning and preparation.

The Right Place

For example, you all know the old real estate adage—location, location, location. As it turns out, that’s not just true when you’re buying a home. It’s also true when you’re expanding one. Sunrooms need to have the perfect location if you really want them to add value and comfort. The entire point of the sunroom is to let light in throughout the day—so build it on the light side or scenic side of your home! This might sound silly and self-explanatory, but you would be amazed how many sunroom additions are poorly planned, built in a place where they just don’t get a lot of natural light. Picking the right location for your sunroom might also require you to prepare the land. You’ll want to remove any natural obstacles in the way, before you begin sunroom construction.

Make the Room Adaptable

Naturally, your sunroom is going to have a lot of glass, allowing for as much natural light to get in as possible. That’s what makes the room so great, but in some cases it can also make the room a little difficult to use. What happens during the balmy Baltimore summers, when all that light brings with it sweltering heat? You can prepare for this by ensuring that at least some of your energy-efficient windows have screens to allow you to open them whenever you like and allow a cool breeze to waft in—without having to worry about bugs!

A Functional Facility

Of course, the sunroom needs to have more than just big windows. If you’re going to spend any time there, enjoying the warmth and the light, then you’ll need some comfy furniture. Just make sure you don’t get too much of it, and cause the room to feel cluttered. Many homeowners start using their sunroom as a kind of additional storage space, but when you start cluttering the room, you significantly diminish your odds of ever actually using it. So don’t give the room any clutter, but do give it a sense of purpose. Give it a function. Having it as a “general” room may mean that it’s not used as much. Make it the family game room. Make it a designated reading area. You might even make it a kitchen, or a space to practice your violin! Make sure the room has some role in your family life, beyond just being another room that happens to catch good sunlight. All of this is simply to say that, when adding onto your home, planning is always important—never more so than when adding a sunroom.