As any sunroom owner will tell you, there are unlimited ways to use a sunroom extension in your home. Most people choose to use it as a luxurious second sitting room (often a kid free zone for those with noisy young ones around!), and the sunroom acts as a quiet haven to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the views out of the window. For others, however, there are plenty of creative uses for a sunroom, from a home gym to an indoor greenhouse for those plants needing heat and humidity. No matter what purpose you put your sunroom towards, you can’t avoid that it’s a unique home in your house that possesses qualities of both indoor and outdoor living.
Connect The Indoors To The Outdoors
The big windows and open plan nature of the sunroom means that you get plenty of natural sunlight and warmth, and its position out of the back of your house means that you’ll feel like you’re sitting in the middle of your garden. You also get all the benefits of being inside during the Calgary summer, protected from the bugs and the ever present winds. Therefore, you need to work out out how to connect your home to the outdoors with a sunroom using some of these tricks:
- Add some greenery – the easiest way to create a transitional space is to bring some of the outside into your sunroom in the forms of houseplants and flowers. While you can go full jungle with a greenhouse, simply putting potted plants in the corners or hanging planters by the windows will create the perfect indoor outdoor vision. Choose plants that don’t produce flowers as otherwise you’ll lose the beauty once they’ve bloomed as well as the stress of trying to work out how to pollinate them inside.
- Focus on the windows – the large windows are the biggest difference between your sunroom and any other room in your house. It makes sense to make them the focal point of your room. You can achieve this by creating separate seating areas that face outwards towards the windows, or by hanging distinctive drapes around the windows to draw the eye to the outside world.
- Floral patterns – a final way to connect your sunroom to the outdoors is by picking out flower based patterns for your soft furnishings and outdoor scenes for any pictures you choose to hang. In an ideal world, these would pick the dominant colours and patterns in your garden, but any sort of curling vine or floral pattern will help transition you from house to garden.
A final strategy to connect your home to the outdoors with a sunroom is to hang a large mirror on the external wall of your home. This will make your sunroom feel bigger and provide you with the feeling of being surrounded by the outside, as well as an ever changing view as the Calgary seasons change.
