Garden Bar Surrey | Bespoke Garden Bar Rooms Built to Order

There is a moment most homeowners have when they are squeezing guests into the kitchen for the third time, or watching the living room get taken over again, where the idea of a dedicated bar room out in the garden stops being a fantasy and starts feeling like the obvious thing to do. We build them across Surrey, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire and every one is different because every customer has a different idea of what their perfect bar looks like.

What a Garden Bar Room Actually Looks Like

The photos on this page are from a real build we completed in Surrey. The brief was a space that worked as an adult bar and entertaining room, with a proper fitted bar, dart board, TV and somewhere to sit. The customer chose black composite cladding to match their garden fencing, full-width sliding aluminium doors, and interior walls in dark forest green. The bar itself has acoustic slatted panels on the front face, an LED strip running underneath the marble-effect worktop, and a 1920s-style bottle display and glass holder above it.

That is one version. We have built garden bars with pool tables, with cinema setups behind the bar, with neon signs and exposed brick-effect panels, and with bifold doors that open the whole front of the room onto a decked terrace. The structure we build. What goes inside is yours to decide, and we can help you think through what will actually work in the space.

What Most Customers Include

There is no standard spec for a garden bar room because the whole point is that it reflects what you actually drink, watch and do. That said, here is what comes up most often across the builds we complete.

What Size Do You Need?

6m x 4m is the size we recommend as a starting point for a garden bar room without a pool or snooker table. That gives comfortable space for a proper bar along one wall, seating and a dart board, and is comfortable for six to eight people socialising.

If you want to add a pool or snooker table, the room size depends on two things: the size of the table itself, and what else is sharing the floor space with it. The figures below are the minimum room sizes required for normal play using a standard 57-inch cue with nothing else in the room. If you are adding a bar, seating or a dart board in the same space, you need to add that footprint on top.

These minimum dimensions allow for normal shots with a standard cue. Awkward shots hard against the cushion will need a shorter cue regardless of room size. The key point is that these are the room sizes needed for the table alone. A 7ft American pool table needs a 5m x 4m room just for play. Add a bar, bar stools and a seating area alongside it and you are looking at a room of 6m x 5m or larger to avoid it feeling cramped.

We design around the table dimensions and everything else that is sharing the room. Tell us what you are planning at the start and we will give you an honest view on whether the size works or whether you need to go bigger.

The Build: What is Included as Standard

A garden bar room from My Retreat is built to the same specification as every other room we make. The bar fittings and internal design are bespoke to you; the structure underneath them is consistent because consistent is the only way to build something that lasts.

• Concrete screw pile or pad foundations designed for the load of your specific room
• Structural steel floor frame, fully insulated beneath
• 50mm EPS foam insulation in walls, floor and ceiling as standard
• Plastered interior walls, ready to paint in any colour
• Double-glazed aluminium sliding or bifold doors and windows
• EPDM rubber flat roof with a 25-year life expectancy
• Consumer unit, lighting circuits, double sockets throughout
• Cable run from the house, either fence-clipped or underground
• External wall lighting positions wired in during the build

Additional circuits for a fridge, a dedicated high-draw appliance or an external socket are sized and wired at build stage. Tell us what you are putting in the room and we plan the electrics around it from the start.

Garden Bar Room or Garden Bar and Games Room?

The two most common briefs we get are a dedicated adult bar room, and a room that doubles as a bar for parents and a games and hangout space for teenagers. Both work well in the same building because the uses are naturally complementary. The bar and seating area serves adults; the dart board, games console setup or pool table serves everyone.

The key is designing the layout so both uses work simultaneously rather than one getting in the way of the other. A bar along the back wall with seating facing the doors, dart board on one side wall and a TV position above the bar works for both audiences in a 6m x 4m room without feeling compromised. We talk through this at the design stage for every build.

Planning Permission for a Garden Bar Room

A garden bar room falls under the same permitted development rules as any other garden room. The fact that it is a bar rather than an office makes no difference to planning law. Provided the standard rules are met, no planning application is required.

The rules that apply: single storey only, maximum overall height 2.5m if any part of the structure is within 2 metres of a boundary, maximum 4m (dual-pitched roof) or 3m (flat or pent roof) if set further back, and total outbuildings cannot cover more than 50% of the original garden area.