There’s lots to love about Pinterest from a design point of view. It’s really helpful for us as designers to see the styles our clients are drawn to, and it’s a great resource for people who are renovating their home without the help of an interior designer.
One drawback is that lots of the beautiful homes on display aren’t in the UK – and don’t necessarily work with UK building regulations (or typical house size, or climate!). We often have to break the news to clients that some of the ideas they like are illegal or prohibitively expensive to build here. Here’s our top 5;
Illegal stairs
Requirements for staircases in the UK include;
A handrail
Protection from falling (e.g. a balustrade)
No gap >100mm between spindles or open treads (gaps between the stairs).
Which rules out these:
We can (and do) design beautiful, minimal stairs that will meet Building Regs – for example the mezzanine staircase at our Buckinghamshire project
Open plan hallways
Open plan designs can create lovely spacious, light, sociable living spaces. When considering how to open up a home, it can be tempting to look at including the hallway/ stairs in your thinking – a separate hallway can eat up valuable space.
However, the UK building regulations on fire safety require a protected route of escape from bedrooms. For a 2 storey house, this is usually not too onerous to achieve, even if the ground floor is open plan. For a flat with a front door onto a communal landing, or a house with a loft conversion, it becomes more challenging – often requiring some combination of misting system and smoke ventilation.
Huge patio doors
In a new ground floor extension, the area of glazing should be <25% the size of the new floor area. This is because glass is less effective than (most) walls/ roofs when it comes to insulation – which can result in houses that require a lot of energy to heat in winter and that boil (and maybe need air conditioning) in summer.
To meet the energy efficiency regulations, any extension with a larger area of glazing needs better-than-standard insulation elsewhere; so not prohibitive but needs thinking about in advance.
A walk-in shower
Not regulations this time, but space. We’ve written before about how a proper walk-in shower without a door requires a similar footprint to a bath – often not an option in a compact bathroom unless you are happy to deal with (constantly) mopping up spray. We’ll often recommend a slightly smaller shower with a door – allowing more space for storage or other fittings. The other snag can come with trying to achieve a level walk-in tiled floor (rather than a tray) – some modern flats are built with concrete slabs rather than joists, preventing pipework from being recessed into the floor. Even with wooden joists, an enclosure and tray will usually provide better water-proofing against leaks than a tanking kit and tiled floor.
Plywood joinery
The trend for plywood in kitchens and wardrobes has been an enduring one; it was once a relatively cheap material, elevated into luxury through high quality joinery & finishing. We’ve worked with specialists to install some lovely kitchens!
At time of writing, there is a significant supply challenge with many types of timber, including birch ply – which is typically made from timber from Ukraine, Russia & Belarus.
While some carpentry companies will still be using it, many are switching to solid wood or making their own from constructional veneer. You can expect any bespoke plywood joinery to be very expensive, so consider carefully-sourced English oak as a local alternative.
At our Wapping Project we included a bespoke bedhead + lift-up storage unit using solid timber
Do you need help with your project in London or Brighton? Contact us now!