We get asked this gently, every few weeks. Wouldn't it be warmer in wood? Wouldn't it look more "garden" with timber posts?
It's a fair question, and we've thought about it for a long time. The honest answer is that we love timber — for the right thing — and we don't think a veranda or a glass garden room is the right thing.
What aluminium actually is.
Powder-coated aluminium is, in essence, a metal that has been sealed in a baked layer of architectural paint. It doesn't rust. It doesn't rot. It doesn't move with the seasons. The colour, applied at high temperature in a factory, is the kind of finish you put on the outside of office buildings and bridges — the sort of thing that's expected to look the same in twenty-five years.
Our frames are extruded as single profiles and top quality aluminium. There is nothing to swell, split, or warp.
What you give up.
Three things, mostly. Warmth of feel, if you like to run your hand along a post and feel grain. Patina, if you like the way wood ages into silver. And a small amount of character — though modern aluminium profiles are crisp, almost architectural, in a way that sits beautifully against brick, render, or stone, and that's a different kind of character.
For some customers — usually older barns, listed cottages, gardens designed around an arts-and-crafts house — those things matter, and we'd point them gently towards a good carpenter we know.
We love timber. We just don't think it belongs on a roof.
What you get back.
- No maintenance. Wash it with a sponge, twice a year if you feel like it, never if you don't. There is nothing to re-stain, re-treat, or re-seal.
- Slimmer profiles. Aluminium is structurally efficient — we can span much further between posts than a timber frame could. The view is wider, the room feels bigger, and the building disappears.
- Colour stability. RAL anthracite stays anthracite. RAL 9010 stays RAL 9010. Sun, rain, frost — they don't touch it.
- Recyclability. Aluminium is one of the most recycled materials on the planet. Fifty years from now, this veranda is feedstock for the next one.
And the unromantic part.
We're a small family business. We've been called back to fix timber verandas built by other companies — where the staining is peeling, the corners have opened, the roof has sagged on a long span. We have never been called back to fix the frame on an aluminium veranda we installed.
That's why we build the way we build. Not because metal is fashionable — because in the British weather, on a structure that lives outdoors year-round, it's the material that lets you get on with your life.