Are architects, developers and those building their dream homes missing a vital trick with the size of the garage?
Garages were designed to house cars. But in recent years, cars have grown in size and owners have accumulated more goods which need to be stored somewhere. So over the years the expensive car has been left on the road or drive and all the household items have been kept in the garage.
With the current trend of buying a house, knocking it down and building the “dream house” happening all over the UK, are architects and developers really thinking about the design and build of the garage? Alastair Broom of GarageTek sees home owners on a daily basis and hears the same pleas: “Some of the best developers in the country totally ignore the garage: they treat it as an afterthought by putting on three small single garage doors and, in many cases, I have met homeowners who cannot get their car into the garage at all. Why don’t they put in garage doors wide enough for today’s car?”.
Another problem comes with the design when all the heating, ventilation, plumbing and home media systems are placed on the walls, thereby taking away valuable storage space. So when owners need to keep such items as golf clubs, bicycles, ladders, tools and household items somewhere, there is reduced space available.
Broom’s answer is clear: “There is usually plenty of space in a good design for a power room where everything can be placed in an orderly and tidy scheme. This would release something like 25 square metres of wall space for all the families storage needs”.
And his final point is about the state of the floor. Usually this is left as a poor concrete finish, sometimes it has a coat of paint that will flake off within a few weeks and only sometimes is a good ceramic tiled floor laid. There are many options available including a top of the range resin floor through to a very popular inter-locking tiled floor, both available in a variety of colours.
To Alastair Broom the answers are simple:
Put in a door or doors wide enough for today’s larger cars
Create a power room where all the utility items can be placed
Leave the walls free for storage
GarageTek design and install bespoke storage and organisation systems in garages in private homes throughout the UK. They have solutions for wall storage, floor coverings, ceiling systems and a large range of activity racks, all of which go on the wall.
