How to convert your garage into a beautiful lifestyle room

If you’re still making feeble excuses putting off your New Year’s resolutions it’s time for a reality check. Admit it, you don’t need to slowly ween yourself off massive portions, cake and wine for any longer. We’re in week two of January so put those chocolates away and let’s make a resolution hit list:

• Get fit
• Get rid of your junk
• Get a bigger house…

Do you think you can achieve these three very common new year aims? If you’re scoffing at the ambitious idea, scoff no more; mydeco.com has teamed up with Dura Fitted Garages to offer one solution to tackle all these at once: re-design the messy garage to become a beautiful, integral part of the home. The garage offers a viable opportunity to create an extra room for a home gym, study or playroom, so even the last objective is achievable in the gloom of the recession.

In the first of our How to… transform your garage series for 2012, Daniel Calvert, Dura’s marketing co-ordinator, reveals the first three steps you need to consider:

Why convert your garage

With more of us choosing to re-design our homes rather than moving, getting every area of the house looking at its best is becoming more important than ever. Whether you’ve decided to give the kitchen a fresh and contemporary feel or have invested in creating a country house look for the living room, it’s essential that each room of your home is beautifully designed.

However, although we take a great deal of pride in how our homes are designed, there has always been one room in the house that doesn’t get much coverage – the garage. Whilst we all know about the potential floor space this room can offer, many of us fail to consider that the garage might just have its own purpose in life other than being used as a dumping ground or a place to try and squeeze in your car.

For many years our American friends have been leading the way in garage design, creating rooms that are so beautifully organised, they rival some of the living areas we’ve created back home. They’ve realised that the garage needn’t be just a storage area and if fitted out correctly it can become an integral part of the home.

With large advances in the styling of garage furniture, garage décor and garage flooring, you can now make your garage into a lifestyle room that meets your exact requirements. Whether you require the perfect home gym, a stylish lads’ room or a kid’s play area, with the right planning and the correct use of colour and accessories you can create another beautiful room for your home.

Step one – declutter

So how do you get started with this much-needed transformation? First of all you need to have a serious de-clutter. Although you may be ashamed to admit it, the garage is the one room that is rarely under control and is full of those little items that we keep, ‘just in case’ we might need them one day. This clutter only adds to the dumping ground feel of the garage so have an honest review of what you need and throw away all those bits that are just gathering dust.

Step two – insulate

The garage can also be a very draughty and cold environment so the next thing you need to do is make sure that the whole of the garage is well insulated. With the introduction of cavity wall insulation and garage door insulation you can create a warmer and more comfortable room that’s a pleasure to be in. Although you could remove the garage door to create one complete room, this generally requires planning permission so it is not something that’s advised.

Step three – flooring

We’d then recommend using a suitable garage floor covering such as Epoxy Resin flooring or Porcelain floor tiles to create a comfortable and warm floor under foot. These finishes are available in a range of contemporary colours, styles and textures to fit in with the styling of the rest of your lifestyle room. Once the floor is complete the rest of the styling and décor of the room really does depend on what you want to use it for.

Step four – you decide

Over the next few months, mydeco.com will be providing you with a series of ways that you transform your garage into a stylish lifestyle room for your requirements. In February’s article we will focus on how you can create the perfect garage gym but before then we’d really like to see how you would re-design your garage using the 3D Home Planner tool on mydeco.com.

Here are a few room ideas I like which have already been designed by the creative mydeco.com community. asifgoldpk has created this colourful and tactile kids play room which is a wonderful idea for either a small or large garage area.

3D room designed by asifgoldpk

For older children, turning the garage into a cool games room is a good idea, or an after work den to keep the biggest kid in the house (aka husband) out of the way… SteveReid has combined both in his 3D Grand Designs Boys Reading Room:

3D room designed by SteveReid

Or there’s the home gym which will make sure your New Year’s fitness resolution never slips off the treadmill again. I like creo_forma‘s 3D home gym, which is decorated to integrate into the inviting home environment, although it is rather big for a garage conversion. If you were to re-design your garage what would it look like? Use the 3D Home Planner and show us your designs by posting a link in this blog’s comment box.

3D room designed by creo_forma