Are you allowed to sleep in a garden room

Garden Room Usage Regulations and Considerations

Before deciding whether a garden room can be used as a sleeping area, it's important to consider legalities and planning regulations. Garden rooms, depending on their design and intended use, often fall under 'permitted development' rights, meaning you may not need planning permission. However, the situation can change when it comes to overnight accommodation.

Planning Permission for Sleeping in Garden Rooms

The primary factor determining whether you're allowed to sleep in a garden room is its classification in the eyes of the local authorities. A garden room is typically classified as an “outbuilding” and thus subject to permitted development, however the intended use is critical. The compliance is reliant on whether the outbuilding will be incidental or ancillary accommodation.

Ancillary accommodation – for the purposes of planning, ancillary relates to anything that would usually be a function of the main home e.g. sleeping, eating, sitting room, shower room. A garden room intended to provide permanent additional sleeping accommodation would require a planning application.

Incidental accommodation – covers most activities that you wouldn’t usually undertake in the main home e.g. a home office, a gym, a hobby room, a swimming pool changing room. It’s important to note that a kitchen area or shower room can also be included in the incidental accommodation if it forms part of that use, for example a shower room in a gym garden room or a kitchen area in an office. A garden building that is intended only as incidental would not need planning permission (subject to any specific restrictions to the property).

For clarity, only incidental accommodation is covered under permitted development so ancillary accommodation would need to be installed with planning permission.

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