Transform Your Home: The Ultimate Guide to Modern Extensions in the UK

Transform Your Home: The Ultimate Guide to Modern Extensions in the UK

Extending your home by constructing a bright, airy, modern extension can be a fantastic opportunity to add value to your property, incorporate additional space to accommodate a growing family, or replace the small, dark kitchens typical of a Victorian home or period property.

Homeowners increasingly look for ways to build a rear extension or construct upwards with a two-storey addition in favour of moving – since revitalising and improving your current home is often significantly more affordable.

Let the construction experts at Pinnacle Works explain how modern extension construction works, and share some ideas and inspiration to breathe fresh life into your home and include subtle design details that embrace the style of your property whilst feeling contemporary.

Understanding Modern Extensions

While most homeowners think of sliding glass doors, ultra-modern brushed concrete, and open-plan living when they consider a modern extension, the reality is that your house extension is entirely up to your preferences, tastes, and the way you live in your home.

The differentiating factor between a conventional and a modern extension is the way your additional space is designed, often including:

    • Locally sourced, eco-friendly materials that offer superb performance – think next-gen insulation and glazing, underfloor heating and long-lasting, toxin-free paints.
    • Excellent energy conservation, with heat retention, solar panelling, low-carbon appliances, and central heating a key priority for many.
    • Extension designs that mimic the style of a period home yet use more efficient techniques to achieve the same aesthetic; particularly important in conservation areas where the local authority will only grant planning permission for an extension that retains the look of the original structure.

Contemporary extensions might include a larger dining space, adding French doors that open into your garden, a beautiful kitchen/diner with a sleek glass link corridor, or a rear extension with plenty of glazing to flood the room with natural light – but the design principles and focus on durable materials are fundamental.

Planning Your Modern Extension

We often consult with homeowners with great initial extension ideas, whether you’re keen on building classic bay windows to make the most of panoramic views, want to use charred timber cladding on the exterior of your rear façade or have your heart set on an elegant, covered balcony to create a focal point on a two-storey extension to revamp your family home.

The design process itself should be approached methodically, with assistance from a capable team of contractors with plenty of experience completing contemporary extensions. The steps may include:

    • Putting together your main deliverables and design ideas, considering how you’d like your new modern extension to work with your existing property.
    • Defining your budget, and collating estimates and quotations to ensure you have full knowledge of the total anticipated pricing – including the installation cost for a new kitchen, bathroom or other appliances.
    • Reviewing your extension plans to ensure they are viable and structurally achievable and then submitting technical drawings to the local authority planning permission department.

Collaborating with a knowledgeable construction team, alongside architects and designers with ample expertise in modern extension design, is essential – we can suggest materials, shapes, structures and approaches to achieve your planned contemporary extension while remaining within budget and adherent to local planning limitations.

Popular Types of Modern Extensions

One of the primary objectives when designing a modern extension is to ensure it will work well with the current property – whether as a contrasting extension with bright, white walls to lighten a dark brick exterior or in keeping with the original structure.

You might, for instance, inject the wow factor into a two-storey addition by using alternatively coloured grouting or render, match the colour and style of brickwork with the existing house, or go for a completely different material – from an extended dining space with an extensive glass roof to a rear extension that looks as if it has always been there.

Glass extensions and orangeries remain hugely popular, as modern, well-insulated garden rooms that extend the sense of bringing the outdoors in. Other high-demand modern extensions include loft conversions, making better use of your upper storeys, or creating a side return extension around a semi-detached house to utilise empty space to extend your living areas.

Each extension project will differ, and we’d always suggest getting in touch to ensure your chosen extension design will work with the layout of your property and budget.

The most common snags include a lack of contingency planning, under-budgeting for variable costs, and making assumptions about the underlying structure of older period properties. Putting sufficient time and detail into the planning process is a great way to ensure your build runs on time and budget and meets your expectations.

Why Choose Pinnacle Works for Your Modern Extension?

Constructing a modern extension necessarily takes time, and it’s paramount you discuss time frames before work begins – acknowledging that high-quality work may be completed efficiently, but a contemporary extension build shouldn’t be rushed. Cut corners inevitably cost more later on, and don’t deliver the same impact.

Pinnacle Works is a full-service contractor with teams of multi-skilled professionals, allowing us to project manage complete extension design and builds in-house. From initial consultation through to the final snagging list, we focus on quality and communication as a family-run business with over 25 years of expertise.

We can steer you through your extension build, handling every aspect from planning permission applications, recommending locally sourced materials and brickwork for consistency, creating technical specifications and drawings, and helping you make decisions about how your completed modern extension will look, feel and flow.

Our commitment to exacting standards is borne out by our countless five-star customer reviews, and we welcome you to access independent testimonials to see how our previous valued clients feel about our services. The Pinnacle Works project gallery is also a great resource, showing you how other contemporary extensions look and providing stimulus for your own extension design.

Please get in touch at any time to discuss your extension plans, arrange a site visit, or drop into our Chichester head office for a chat about the type of extension you’d like to achieve and any concerns or complexities in terms of planning consent or budget, and we’ll get to work.

Upgrading Your Home with Property Extension Designs

Upgrading Your Home with Property Extension Designs

There are countless ways to boost your property value, expand your living space, and improve the capacity of your home.

We regularly work with homeowners keen to expand but unsure how to start the design process or whether to extend upwards, outwards or down. We’ve collated some tips and advice to showcase some popular property upgrades, what’s involved, and factors to consider.

The Advantages of Investing in Your Home

First, let’s answer the obvious question – isn’t it easier to simply sell up and move to a larger property? The decision is, of course, entirely yours, but the average house move costs around £9,000 (plus the cost of purchasing a bigger home) and is considerably more disruptive than a few weeks of improvement work.

It also takes around 295 days to sell your current property (about ten months), and you’d need to think about marketing your existing home and buying somewhere new.

If you like your neighbourhood and are settled in the area, it’s well worth investigating the cost of a property upgrade rather than needing to relocate and potentially enrol in new schools or find alternative job opportunities.

Why Extend Your Property?

The advantages of an extension are compelling, and depending on what you’d like to achieve; it can be a relatively fast and cost-effective way of transforming your home:

  • Repurposing unused space: many properties, particularly period homes, have small side returns and areas that don’t serve a viable purpose. Using that capacity to extend can make use of empty land while significantly improving your property.
  • Increasing property value: the average extension adds 23% to your property value – with a sizeable 71% return on investment, or £14,000 profit reflected in the revised market valuation.
  • Creating extra rooms: most homeowners decide to move because they need a spare bedroom, home office or work area. An extension can add one or more additional bedrooms to your property or create a new kitchen or bathroom.
  • Cheaper and quicker than moving: while a larger-scale two-storey extension is an investment, it is also considerably faster and more cost-efficient than selling your home. Extension can be completed in weeks and ready for immediate use.
  • Upgrading your living standards: designing a bespoke extension is a fantastic opportunity to reconfigure your layout! Whether you’d love picture windows, a sleek contemporary design or classic heritage brickwork, you can play with inspiration to tailor your home to your personality and style.
  • Energy-efficiency benefits: modern extensions comprise all the essential features for improved energy efficiency, such as insulation, double or triple glazing and under-floor heating, making your home lower cost to run and better for the environment.

There are also many choices of material, finish and extension design.

If you have a limited budget, please get in touch for advice about the best ways to achieve your desired outcome while controlling overall costs.

Planning Permission Rules for a Full Property Extension

Planning permission is often perceived as a stumbling block to upgrading your property, but it can be straightforward if you understand the rules and file a comprehensive application.

The government’s Planning Portal explains all the exemptions and limits within which you can extend your home under permitted development rights.

Where planning rules do apply, the process works like this:

  1. Buy a location or site plan from the Planning Portal – you use this to show how the design will look and how close it will be to borders, roads or adjoining properties.
  2. Create drawings and architectural plans demonstrating the materials, construction and finished result of your planned extension.
  3. Work out the project dimensions using a volume calculator to determine the additional cubic metres your extension would create.
  4. Complete the planning application paperwork for Full Planning Permission, attaching your site plan and designs. The associated fee for most extensions is £238.20, including VAT.

Pinnacle Works is always available to assist with each step of the process, draw up technical designs and ensure your application is accurate and within all the relevant guidelines.

Popular Property Extension Design Ideas

If you’re unsure of the style or size of extension that would provide the most benefit to you and your family, it’s wise to review other property extensions and shortlist your priorities in terms of budget, additional rooms, and space required.

Two-Story Property Extension

Double-storey extensions can be in any shape – a rear extension, a side return or a wrap-around extension over two new floors.

The advantage is that you double the living space added, although a two-storey extension does not cost twice that of a smaller one-storey conversion. Homeowners who want to expand their property as much as possible opt for double-storey extensions since the cost is generally around 50% more than a single storey.

Much of the groundwork is identical, so you get more living space for each pound spent and can add an extra bedroom, home office or bathroom upstairs.

Modern Property Extension

A home extension doesn’t need to be a traditional ‘box’ added to the front, side or back of your property.

Alternatives include:

  • Extending the ceiling to create a double-height living space with a dramatic impact and an influx of natural light.
  • Replicating period features with modern, sustainable materials and efficient features such as triple glazing or roof lights.
  • Knocking through internal walls to open up living spaces and combine an outward extension with a larger scale open indoor room.
  • Blending the indoors with a garden is a popular option in urban properties. A garden room or panoramic windows can make darker rooms and even subfloor-level apartments feel bright and spacious.

Side Return House Extensions

A side return is an excellent choice if you wish to retain outdoor space but need a larger living area within your property.

Disused alleyways or slim areas where you keep bins and garden equipment can be repurposed, adding value to your home and plotting the extension across the length of the room and outward.

Side return extensions can be one or two storeys high and usually take around three to four months to complete, from digging the foundations to applying the final touches.

Choosing the Right Extension Design to Upgrade Your Property

We hope we’ve provided you food for thought and some ideas and information about the different home extension types to choose from and the factors to consider before you make any decisions.

Get in touch if you’d like further advice about any of the extensions discussed here, help with a planning application, or support from an experienced design team.