Why UHNWIs Are Adding Designer Garden Offices to £3M+ Properties Instead of Converting Interior Rooms

Ever since the pandemic, people have learned that working from home works best when you can have a separation from your work space and your living space. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to have a dedicated office in the home.

Now, what’s interesting is a trend happening among those with the room inside for an office, but they are taking this a step further and building a designer garden office separate from the main house. Psychologically, this makes sense: if you have the means, it’s best to separate one’s workplace from one’s home entirely. 

For a new generation of Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals (UHNWIs), this trend seems to be taking off, and allowing them to get specialty designers to make a fascinating space just outside their own.

The Capital Asset Value

If someone owns a period property, often it makes more sense to not modify the interior unnecessarily. In some high-value areas, even a modest layout change can affect one’s property valuation. 

Especially if one is looking to design a specific kind of office, hiring architects and interior designers to work with them, then these restrictions can stifle the vision. For example, turning a Georgian drawing room into a functional office can mean enclosing original fireplaces behind joinery, cutting into cornices for cabling, or adding acoustic panels that ruin the look of the space. 

Add to this the Listed Building status, and things can get even more complex. Heritage restrictions, original features, etc. can change how one makes changes. So, for many owners, the prospect of months of negotiation with conservation officers, only to gain a compromised office is not worth it. Therefore, they turn to building a new space without such restrictions.

This way, the main house keeps its formal reception rooms, library and dining spaces, while the garden gains its own special pavilion that absorbs the mess, cables and equipment of modern work. The house remains a period showpiece while the more modern ‘office space’ exists in its own outbuilding.

Architecture in the garden

One of the biggest changes in the last decade of this kind of outbuilding is the sheer calibre of design being applied. What used to be little more than a shed with insulation has now become proper small annexes and pavilions. 

Applying their skill to this are some elite architects, practices in the mould of, are now being asked to turn a corner of a lawn into a fully formed executive suite.

Elite architects are now applying their skills to this niche. Practices in the mould of Níall McLaughlin Architects, shortlisted for RIBA House of the Year with projects such as Saltmarsh House and studios like Threefold Architects, noted for crafted garden and workspace pavilions in London, are being asked to turn a corner of a lawn into a fully formed executive suite.

Such design expertise doesn’t come cheap, however. Budgets of up to £80,000-£200,000 are common when dealing with the upper end of these buildings. That figure typically covers groundworks, underfloor heating, integrated climate control, bespoke joinery, acoustic treatment, security systems and high-performance glazing. In addition, they often use some of the finest features and fixtures, such as Crittall-style steel doors, gallery-grade lighting, and custom in-built furniture. 

Bespoke garden offices of this kind have become a new status symbol for senior executives, giving them a worthy office to work from at home. At the top end, they are treated closer to miniature hotel suites, complete with powder rooms, wine fridges, and other amenities.

Status, Separation and the Monaco effect

There’s another reason why these separate office spaces are taking off. For many UHNWIs, the standard of luxury must be consistent throughout the estate. Therefore, a luxury office space while on the home property has made more and more sense, especially after WFH became more prominent. 

Previously, some of the default upgrade rooms were wine cellars, cinema spaces, and spas. And those are still being built, but many realised that a lot of their time still had to be spent in an office, so why not give the home office a special upgrade too? This is where a lot of their Zoom calls will be happening too, so it’s a space many will see and they want to reflect themselves. A dedicated, beautifully designed office, detached from the main house but within the estate, signals that the owner takes both business and privacy seriously.

Global clients are importing expectations. Dubai villas and Monaco apartments at the super-prime level routinely include dedicated office suites with controlled access, concierge-style support and their own AV infrastructure. This style of office has now become more desirable to have at home. 

There is also a practical angle. Many UHNWIs work across time zones. A 5am call to New York or a midnight board meeting with Singapore is actually easier to do in a separate area, away from kids and the spouse. Sound insulation, blackout blinds and a short walk across the lawn help to provide that space.

Returns on Design

Not only do such outbuildings often not interfere with interior design, they are built in part for their market appeal. That is, while they might not be built directly because they increase the value of the property, a well-built one often makes up for its cost in a higher valuation of the property overall.  

Some of the latest reports on garden rooms suggest they can add 5–15% to a property’s value when executed to a high standard. In the mid-market, that uplift might be modest. But if we’re talking about a £3 million house in Notting Hill or Chelsea, even a conservative 5% translates to £150,000, which makes up for the cost (roughly speaking) of building a serious architect-designed pavilion.

Estate agents active in prime central London report that buyers now look for clear work-from-home solutions as standard, especially among senior executives. When this has its own dedicated building, it reads more strongly as an extra “asset” in the listing, not just a reallocation of existing space.

There are also softer value arguments:

• Preservation of key rooms: by keeping formal reception rooms intact, owners retain the classic “tour” that buyers expect – entrance hall, drawing room, dining room, library, giving a coherent, elegant look-and-feel, keeping the ‘business’ side of things separate.
  
  

• Flexibility over time: a garden pavilion can start life as an office, then become a studio, consulting room or guest suite. That ease of flexibility also reads as high-value to potential buyers.
  
  

• Tax and structuring: in some cases, separate structures can be tied more clearly to business use, which may have advantages in certain ownership setups for taxes and business purposes.

For architects, the trend offers a compact canvas: a single, highly crafted object in the landscape. For UHNWIs, it offers something that isn’t easily replicated in the house: a calm, self-contained place to work at home, while still ‘away’ from the main property. 

It’s that short walk that inhabits the real luxury moment. It’s not simply more space, but a clear line between work and home.

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