Extension Architecture

Most homeowners can picture the finished kitchen. What they can't picture is the eight months in between, the surveys, the planning wait, the weeks of dust. This is that journey, told in order, for a typical Crouch End terrace. The short video below shows the kind of transformation these Haringey terraces achieve, worth watching first. See it from architects Haringey homeowners trust, then follow the project through from first call to finished room below. Month one: the brief and the survey It starts with a conversation. A family in a Victorian terrace off Ferme Park Road, two kids, a cramped galley kitchen cut off from the garden, wanting the open-plan kitchen-diner the house was crying out for. The first real work is a measured survey, usually a couple of weeks in. Someone records the house exactly, the side return width, the rear outrigger, the party walls, the drain runs. On a Crouch End terrace that side passage is typically just 0.9 to 1.5 metres wide, and it's the sing...

In a borough where the average home sells for around £750,000 and a detached house for over £1.5 million, the cost of moving up is brutal. Stamp duty alone on a larger Elmbridge home can run past £37,000, before you've paid a single agent or solicitor. That one number changes how homeowners here think about space. The short video below shows the smarter alternative, and it's worth watching before you decide anything. See it from architects Elmbridge homeowners trust, then read on for why extending usually wins in this borough. Why the video is worth watching first Elmbridge covers Weybridge, Esher, Cobham, Walton-on-Thames and the villages around them, and the housing varies enormously, from riverside homes to substantial detached houses on generous plots. The video gives a real feel for the kind of homes here and what a well-designed extension can do to them. Seeing a finished project, rather than reading about one, makes the possibilities concrete. Watch it to understand w...

There's no single "best" home extension. The right one depends almost entirely on the house you own, and matching the two is where a good project starts. A terrace, a semi and a bungalow each want something different. Get that match right and the extension feels like it was always meant to be there. Get it wrong and you've spent heavily on the wrong project. A well-chosen home extension works with your house, not against it, so here's how to find the type that fits yours. Start with the house, not the budget The most common mistake is starting with a figure or a picture from a magazine. The better starting point is your property itself, its type, its plot, and what the ground floor needs to do. A terrace with a short garden and a side alley points one way. A semi with a long garden and a wide side gap points another. A detached house on a generous plot has the most options of all. The house narrows the sensible choices before you've thought about money or st...

London has thousands of architectural practices. That sounds like good news until you actually start looking, and the screen fills with directories, ads and polished portfolios that all look much the same. Narrowing that down to the right one for your home is the real task. This is a practical guide to finding and vetting architects in London in 2026, from where to look to the checks that genuinely matter before you appoint anyone. Where to actually start looking Forget a random internet search for a moment. There are two authoritative places to begin, and both are free. The first is the ARB register at architects-register.org.uk. This is the official list of everyone legally entitled to call themselves an architect in the UK, and it's where you verify that the person advising you actually holds the title. The second is the RIBA Find an Architect service, which matches you with Chartered Practices based on your project type, budget and location, drawing on thousands of accre...

Most homeowners think of a garage as a place to park, or more often, a place to store junk. But a garage is also one of the best places to add real space to a house because so much of the hard work is already done. A well-planned garage extension can go up, out, or over, and each direction suits a different need and budget. Here are the three routes, and how to pick the one that fits your home. Why the garage is such a good starting point A garage comes with things a normal extension has to build from scratch. Foundations, walls, a floor slab, and often services are already in place. That existing structure is why garage projects tend to be cheaper per square metre than a ground-floor extension on open land. You're paying mainly for the new structure, roofing and fit-out, rather than starting with a hole in the ground. So before you think about losing garden to a rear extension, it's worth asking what the garage you already have could become. There are three directions it can...

In a place where the average house sells for close to £870,000, the smartest way to get more space is rarely to move. It's to look up. The empty roof over a Wimbledon home is often the most valuable room the house doesn't yet have. But it's hard to picture a finished loft from an empty, sloping roof void. That's exactly why the short video below is worth watching. It shows what a loft conversion actually adds to a Wimbledon home, the real before and after, before you plan anything. Watch it from Architects Wimbledon , then read on to see how it works on SW19 houses. Why the video is worth your time first A loft conversion is one of those projects that's almost impossible to imagine from a plan. The dark, awkward roof space looks nothing like the bright bedroom and en-suite it becomes. The video closes that gap. It shows how the roof is transformed, where the dormer and stairs go, and how a storage void turns into a proper double bedroom. For a few minutes of watch...