Can You Live in a Garden Dome?

What a dome is brilliant for

As an additional space, a dome earns its keep every day of the week:

• A home office, studio, gym, lounge or dining room: used for hours at a time, year-round.
• An occasional bedroom or guest space: lovely for a summer night under the stars, a sleepover or a teenager's hideaway.
• A wellness or hobby room: yoga, reading, music, painting.

For all of these (using the dome as a comfortable room, including sleeping in it now and then), it's a superb choice. That's exactly what it's designed for.

If you sleep in it on a cold night, keep the heating simple: electric heaters are easiest, kept well away from the panels. Any fuel-burning heater needs ventilation and a carbon monoxide alarm; never run an unflued one while you sleep, and fit a wood burner only through a HETAS-registered installer, with a proper flue and the clearances they specify. More in our guide to heating a garden dome.

Where "living in it" crosses a line

Treating a dome as a permanent home or a self-contained annexe (a "granny flat") is where you move from using a garden room to creating a dwelling, and that's governed by rules a dome isn't intended to meet:

• Building regulations. Habitable dwellings must meet standards for insulation, fire safety, drainage, ventilation and more, so living in a garden building would need building regulations approval as a dwelling. Polycarbonate isn't an insulator, and a dome isn't a dwelling built to those standards. Even short of full-time living, setting a garden building up as regular sleeping accommodation can bring building regulations into scope.
• Planning permission. Permanent residential use, or an annexe, would need planning permission, quite separate from the permitted development rules that usually cover a garden room of this size. Even for ordinary garden-room use, check with your local planning authority, especially for listed buildings, conservation areas, siting near boundaries and height; rules differ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (our planning permission guide has the detail).
• Council tax and utilities. A separate dwelling can attract its own council tax band and needs proper services: water, drainage and dedicated power.
• Security. The door doesn't lock as standard, so a dome isn't set up as a securable, self-contained living unit, or as the place to leave valuables overnight.

None of this means a dome isn't fantastic. It means full-time living is simply outside what it's designed for.

The sensible approach

If you want a beautiful extra room you'll use constantly and sleep in occasionally, a dome is ideal: buy with confidence. If you're thinking of genuine full-time living or an annexe, talk to your local planning authority and building control first, and take professional advice on what would be required. Don't rely on a garden room, of any kind, to serve as a dwelling without going through the proper process. We'd always rather tell you that straight than oversell.

Frequently asked questions