Garden Office Builders in East Dulwich and South London
CanaCabins designs and builds bespoke garden offices across East Dulwich and South London. We have been building outdoor structures in these streets since 2012, with over forty years in the trade behind us, and a garden office is now the single most common thing we are asked for.
A garden office gives you a separate room to work in without moving house or losing a bedroom to a desk. Built properly, insulated and heated, it works all year round rather than turning into a cold shed by November.
- Based in East Dulwich, SE22
- 27 completed projects across South London
- Free site visit and written estimate, no obligation
Get a free estimate
Tell us what you are planning and we will arrange a visit to your garden.
Bespoke garden offices, built around your garden
We do not work from a catalogue of fixed sizes. Every build is drawn around the garden it goes into, which matters in South London where gardens are narrow, access runs through the house or down a side return, and boundaries are tight.
We build to the use you have in mind. A quiet room for video calls needs different treatment to a workshop or a studio, and the specification follows from that conversation rather than from a price list.
Garden office or home office?
If you have the internal space, converting a spare room is usually cheaper. What a garden office gives you that a spare room cannot is separation. A short walk down the garden puts a door between work and home, and it does not cost you a bedroom when you come to sell.
We build both. If a garden office is not the right answer for your house, we will say so at the site visit.
Recent garden office projects
Our featured garden office on St Donatts Road replaced an aged existing garden building. On Maxted Road in Peckham we built a bespoke garden study and office finished in vertical cedar cladding. Both are in the project gallery with photographs.
How the build works
- Site visit and estimate. We come to your garden, talk through how you want to use the space, and give you a written estimate.
- Design. We draw up the building around your garden, your budget and any planning constraints.
- Groundwork and base. Foundations suited to your ground conditions and access.
- Structure and cladding. Frame, insulation, roofing, windows, doors and cladding.
- First and second fix. Electrics, lighting, internal finishes and decoration.
- Snagging and handover. We walk the finished build with you and put right anything that is not right.
Planning permission for a garden building
Most garden rooms and garden offices in South London are built under permitted development, which means no planning application is needed. The usual conditions are that the building sits behind the front of your house, covers no more than half your garden, stays single storey, and keeps to a maximum height of 2.5 metres where it is within two metres of a boundary.
There are exceptions. Parts of Dulwich, Herne Hill and Camberwell fall inside conservation areas, and listed buildings have their own rules. We check this with you at the site visit, and if an application is needed we will tell you before you commit to anything.
Always confirm your own situation with Southwark, Lambeth or your local planning authority. We can point you at the right department.
Related builds
We also build garden rooms, garden art studios, garden yoga studios and bespoke garden sheds.
Book a free site visit
Every CanaCabins build starts with a visit to your garden. We look at access, ground conditions, boundaries and how you want to use the space, then give you an honest estimate with no obligation.
We build across East Dulwich, Dulwich, Peckham, Nunhead, Herne Hill, Camberwell, Forest Hill, Tulse Hill, Brixton, Honor Oak and Crystal Palace.