Extension Architecture

Browse the Esher property market and a pattern jumps out. House after house, the standout feature isn't a grand staircase or a games room, it's the "open plan kitchen/dining room overlooking the garden." In KT10, that ground-floor transformation is what buyers want and sellers advertise. It almost always comes from one project: the single storey rear extension. Working with experienced architects in Esher means getting that extension right on the 1930s detached homes the town is built from. Here's why it's the defining Esher project. The Esher home that's made for it Beneath the headline mansions and multi-million-pound new-builds, the backbone of Esher's family market is the 1930s detached house. Wide, secluded plots across streets like Ember Lane, Chesterfield Drive and the West End area, three to five bedrooms, generous gardens, and typically £1 million to £1.9 million. These houses share a common flaw and a common opportunity. Built in an era of ...

Bromley is the largest London borough by area, and it shows in the houses. Generous 1930s semis with side garages, Edwardian villas on wide plots, and substantial detached homes in Bickley and Chislehurst. These are houses with room to grow in every direction. Which is exactly why the ambitious extension pays off here. The short video below gives a feel for Bromley's homes and what they can become, worth watching before you plan. See it from architects Bromley homeowners trust, then read on for why the borough's roomy stock rewards building bigger. Why the video is worth watching first Bromley's housing is defined by space, and that's hard to appreciate from a floor plan. The side gaps between semis, the depth of the gardens, the scale of the detached homes in Bickley, these are what open up the ambitious projects that tighter inner-London boroughs can't accommodate. The video shows the kind of homes the borough is built from and what a well-designed extension ...

A single storey extension lives or dies on five decisions, and none of them is the colour of the units or the tiles. They're the choices made on the drawing board, long before anything is built, and they're what separate an extension you love from one that merely adds square metres. Get these five right and the room works. Get them wrong and no finish will rescue it. A well-designed single story extension  rests on these decisions, so here they are, in order of importance . Choice one: flat roof or pitched The roof is the first and biggest decision, because it shapes the light, the ceiling and even the planning route. A flat roof is cheaper, keeps the height down, and crucially allows rooflights and lanterns that a pitched roof can't. A pitched roof costs more, around £4,000 to £7,000 extra, but gives a loftier, sometimes vaulted ceiling and suits period houses. There's a planning dimension too. Under permitted development, a flat roof is effectively limited to 3 metre...

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...