Bring out your garden rooms, Edinburgh!

Great to see you again. Looking stunning as always. Tell me, what is it you’re looking for in a garden room?

Is it a strong, dependable, lasts-for-decades garden room?

Or are we thinking more convenience, readily available and a fast turnaround garden room?

Either way, this review of the best garden rooms Edinburgh has to offer will help you make the best buying decision! 

I am NattyShedGirl and I’ve been making timber buildings for over 20 years – I run an exceptionally good-looking Shed Co. founded by my father and uncle back in the 80s and the wealth of knowledge I have is wasted – all alone in my wee heid.

So here we are. I will bestow upon you an unnerving level of expertise explained in a clear and simple format explaining what garden room companies in Edinburgh have to offer. 

The rules of the garden room review

Like all my reviews this one has RULES. 

So let’s get straight to it, shall we? 

• Related content: The best garden rooms in Scotland

What Edinburgh garden rooms are we reviewing?

• UrbanPods 
• Outside In Garden Rooms 
• Scottish Garden Rooms 
• PanelTech Garden Rooms
• Scottish Garden Rooms & Glamping

We’re looking specifically at a garden room size of 12m² which is typically 4m x 3m. This is an ideal size for a garden office, gym or sunroom. 

We want the garden room built for us, in Edinburgh. Whether that’s in sections in a workshop or entirely done onsite, we don’t want to build any of it.   We’re not interested in things like flatpack interlocking log buildings which are typically mass-produced in Southern Europe and unlikely to withstand the Scottish climate. 

We want to know the exact specifications used to build the garden room we’re getting for the money we’re spending. 

And lastly, we need confidence in our buying decision and that the Garden Room company will look after us properly and to what level of services do they offer? 

Let’s gooooo…

Urban Pods 

Closest to our 12m² standard is the Medio 15m² from £23,568 including VAT in February 2025.

Urban Pods are based in Livingston and definitely serve the Edinburgh area. 

What’s included: 

• Ground Screw Base 
• Internal Decorating
• 3 Double Sockets 
• 4 Internal Lights
• 2 External Lights 
• Composite Decking 
• Karndean Flooring
• Infrared Heating

Garden Room Specification: 

Urban Pods have this beautiful cross-section to help explain the specification visually. This is great, however when trying to compare with the other companies we’re falling short in detail. 

I believe that Ross is telling the truth when he talks about “New Build House” equivalent specification because that’s what I say and I can see it’s a very similar construction to building control compliance. However, it would be nice to know the insulation thickness, the framing grade and the name of the materials used in each layer. 

Urban Pods use Siberian Larch cladding. Given its origin, new imports of Siberian Larch are not currently available, so we should be interested to know what alternatives Urban Pods are considering in our current political climate. 

Service: 

Urban Pods Include the Ground Screw Base – There’s no information on the variance in pricing for Ground Screws and your existing lay of the land will have an effect on the price. 

Urban Pods Include the Electrics – Again no information on the variance and given electrical pricing is 70% to do with the mains hook up, in terms of where they take the power from; how far away it is from the Garden Room and how difficult it is to access, will have an effect on the price.  

The reviews Urban Pods have are as expected – top-notch. These guys produce an exceptional build with a high level of service. The Google and Facebook Reviews speak for themselves (once you get over the Earpod confusion). Customers are overjoyed with the whole experience and clearly well looked after. 

Urban Pods are, however, not the right fit for everyone and it is commendable to see Ross acknowledge this in what he can offer and what is classed as not suitable in terms of; site location, planning permission, customer preference. I reckon this is where the above Qs about groundscrews and electrics would come into play. 

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Outside In Garden Rooms 

Looking at Outside In’s 4.2m x 3m Uno Midi Garden Room from £26,250 inc VAT.

Outside In Garden Rooms are based in Edinburgh and have garden rooms available to view at Klondyke Garden Centres.

What’s included: 

• Ground Screws Included  
• Electrics (not hook up) Included
• Quickstep Laminate Flooring 
• EPDM Rubber Roofing 
• uPVC Double Glazed Doors/Windows – Secure Locking
• Delivery and Assembly within the Edinburgh Area 

Garden Room Specification: 

ROOFING – EPDM single-piece rubber membrane

ELECTRICS – Internal LED spotlights, plug, sockets and external lights.

INSULATION – 70mm Ridgid 

CLADDING – Vertical Thermowood Cladding

FOUNDATIONS – Ground Screws

GLAZING – uPVC double-glazed windows and doors 

FLOORING – Quick Step Laminate 

DECOR – White Paint Internally  

DECKING – 0.6m deck to the front

A couple of things I’ve not been able to find (although I thought I had when I reviewed these ladies before…) Is the wall makeup. We want to be sure there’s proper layering going on and that the clad has a breather cavity so it doesn’t penetrate moisture to the internal. Like what Urban Pods showed us earlier. 

Outside In Garden Rooms do address the Siberian Larch issue though, which is great. They’re opting for ThermoWood as the alternative.

We’re a very niche climate here in Scotland, specifically because of the spiking temperatures. Wood contracts and the type of timber you want for garden room cladding needs to be flexible enough to accommodate the huge amount of rain we get along with the plummeting overnight temperatures vs the high midday temperatures across all seasons.  

ThermoWood is a great way to address these issues. The timber is treated with heat and steam to reduce its moisture content and create more stable cladding.

Service: 

Outside In Garden Rooms do not include hook-up for their electrics and I believe this is the better way to do it as there are so many unknowns and nothing worse than expecting a price and it being completely different after a site visit. 

Outside In Garden Rooms is run by two remarkable ladies and they have done such a beautiful job here – there’s a lot of emphasis on family beginnings, sustainability and eco-friendly techniques. Their reviews are prolific and current which is a reassuring sight for any prospective customer. Wendy takes the time to reply and knows each reviewee –  All of the other garden room companies in Edinburgh could do with some attention to their own – including me!

• Related content: Log cabins vs garden rooms: what is the difference?

Scottish Garden Rooms

Scottish Garden Rooms Ashmere design 4m x 3m from £17,018.00.

Scottish Garden Rooms are based in Edinburgh and will deliver within a 70 mile radius (POA thereafter). 

Scottish Garden Rooms are our first Composite Garden Room Manufacturer in this review. This means they do not use timber cladding. Instead they opt for a composite. Composite is a relatively new type of material and is better explained in WorthAView’s Article HERE. It’s basically a mixture of wood particles with other materials such as concrete, plastic and/or resin. 

What’s Included: 

• Fully Insulated Walls 
• EPDM Rubber Roof 
• uPVC windows, doors, fascia and soffit boards
• Subfloor
• One pre-routed electrical socket, spotlights, wiring and fuse box. 

Garden room specification: 

As mentioned, Scottish Garden Rooms use composite cladding for the entirety of the build. I’m unsure of the thickness, however, it looks roughly 20mm clad and possibly 70mm insulation. This composite material is used for the posts that hold the wall panels together.

There’s not really much to it in terms of specification because the walls are as one, and from the construction video, so is the roof – there’s no breather cavity, no membrane and I’m not entirely sure how the cladding holds up against the moisture if it’s 55% part timber. Composite cladding doesn’t allow any breathability in the building, either.

These are modular buildings that all look very similar because they’re varying configurations of the same basic “module”. There’s a Garden Room Designer feature on the website which is very cool, and bespoke rooms are offered on the website, but effectively this means you can have any configuration of square units you like. I suspect that a truly bespoke project isn’t possible with this type of construction.

Service: 

There’s no finished floor as standard, but it is available as an optional extra. 

They do offer a groundworks service, which they quote for separately. They opt for reinforced concrete posts that attach to a timber SubFrame. This is like a  Ground Screw Base except you didn’t buy the screws you bought concrete bricks instead.  

There are Electrics included in the price, however, the hook-up is priced separately. 

The reviews for Scottish Garden Rooms are current but not many and the functionality isn’t permitted on their Facebook Page. The reviews that are there are lovely and given the specification in comparison to Urban Pods and Outside In Garden Rooms it’s really good to see an alternative do well. 

PanelTech Garden Rooms

When updating this entry in February 2025, I used PanelTech’s website to gather the information I needed. However, when I got to looking at their reviews and social media, both Facebook and Instagram profiles had been deleted, and there was no business profile on Google.

With a wee bit more detective work I discovered that PanelTech are still in business, but they don’t seem to make garden rooms any more. They’re now (on Facebook at least) PanelTech Aluminium and Metal Cladding.

We’ve seen this trend over the past five years in the garden room industry, particularly during covid. Trades companies either buy franchises from larger garden room suppliers or turn their hand to making their own due to the increased demand for these products.

The increased use of SIPs makes garden rooms seem like an easy win, as there are so many prefabricated options available. We’ve talked about SIPs before and it’s better explained here through the king of SIPs. However, these companies are often short-lived because making good quality garden rooms isn’t a straightforward business.

In this case, for whatever reason, PanelTech no longer build garden rooms as far as I can see.

This is a shame because their website was a beautiful lesson in functional simplicity of design. It’s not an enormous website but all the necessary information was easy to find and readily accessible.

Garden Rooms & Glamping

Garden Rooms & Glamping offer a 4.4m x 3.2m modular garden room for £13,232.40 including VAT.

Based in Edinburgh, this company also runs Ground Screws Scotland, who provide ground screw bases for our sheds and garden rooms.

What’s included:

• SIP Panel walls
• C24 treated timber for structural edges and joiners
• Breathable membrane
• Firestone rubber roof and Perma roof trims
• ThermoWood cladding (other cladding options include cedar, Canexcel and cedra)
• Double-glazed uPVC windows and doors

Garden Room Specification:

Garden Rooms and Glamping provide modular buildings – this means that they come in set sizes and configurations without any options to modify them. As with Garden Rooms Scotland, Garden Rooms and Glamping provide prefabricated buildings that can be assembled by a group of competent tradesmen.

They’re a cheaper option than the traditionally manufactured alternatives, but there are no options to customise these buildings. What you see is what you get.

This is another SIPs construction, and my biggest question with SIPs is whether or not the construction includes an air cavity to manage moisture. However, this information isn’t on Garden Rooms and Glamping’s website.

Service:

Ground screws or bases are priced separately. There’s no mention of electrics, so whether the company provides this as an extra service or you’re expected to outsource a power supply isn’t clear.

Interestingly there are no reviews yet on Google for Garden Rooms and Glamping. Their Facebook account dates from 2021, so they’re fairly new, but I’d still expect to see some feedback.

So, where are you buying your garden room?

Okay team, that was pretty intense, right?

We have some seriously cool Garden Room Companies in Edinburgh with a lot to offer. Firstly, hats off to Urban Pods and Outside In Garden Rooms (again) for keeping up the standard for our traditional construction and Outside In for trying something new with Thermowood.

Scottish Garden Rooms and Garden Rooms & Glamping for offering a more affordable alternative, PanelTech for reminding us that building garden rooms isn’t for everyone.

Ultimately for me, If I was in Edinburgh I’d be considering the two traditional companies. They’ve also been on the go long enough not to disappear or go bust on me before completing the job. I know it’s a fickle scenario to express but it’s a very real consideration just now. Facing off another volatile financial crisis is nae fun. We’re totalling 3 in 35 years if you’re counting by the way…

And on that light-hearted note – I’ll take a moment to remind you, everyone deserves a Shedlife and I will forever be the one to help you make the best buying decision for you and your Sheddie Dreams. 

Peace Out. 

Natty x