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:
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- 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:
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- 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.