An Expert Guide to Our Oak and Timber Porch Designs

Finding the porch design that you love and that suits your property best is often a challenge. That is why we at The Porch Specialist have put together this expert guide to our own designs and the process each one goes through to become a kit that could soon be installed over the front or back door of your home. 

Read on to find out more about the oak and timber porch designs that we will create as kits, ready for you to build at your own pace once the work is signed off and delivered to your door. Or, if you don’t want to wait because you already know which design you would like, contact us right away and we can get started on helping you make your purchase.

Popular Timber Porch Designs in the UK

Porches are a popular home feature across the whole of the UK. It’s no wonder, either when you take into account the versatility in styles and designs, the fact that they offer great curb appeal to properties, that they can be treated as small extensions in some cases and can even add value to a house if the owner ever plans to sell.

Not every porch design is exactly the same, however, and some come with features that others lack. 

Below, we have listed some of the most popular designs you’ll find for wooden back and front porches in the UK:

• Wall-Mounted Porches: These are attached to the wall above your front or back door. Sometimes called “canopy” porches, they are designed to protect your door from the elements – particularly rain, sleet, and snow. Otherwise, they are mostly decorative, good for smaller spaces, and offer a touch of charm to a property without the homeowner having to commit to a larger structure.
  
• Wall and Floor-Mounted Porches: These porch designs are attached to the wall above a door, but also supported on the floor by two column-like wooden legs. They are mostly open, and like wall-mounted porches are best for simple weather protection and decoration.
  
• Low Brick Plinth Porches: These porches are like wall and floor-mounted porches, but offer a small dwarf wall as support. This offers a little bit of extra protection against the elements and can be utilised as post-and-package protection when you’re not in and have had something delivered.
  
• High Brick Plinth Porches: These offer a higher wall than low brick plinth porches and even greater protection from the elements. They’re also even better at protecting packages that have been delivered and can make a nice outdoor seating area if you should choose to install a garden bench.
  
• Full-Height Porches: These porches are like brick plinth designs, but come without a wall. They often come with balustrades or bannisters.

We will be glad to offer you each of these porch designs if you’re considering building one for your own home, with each roof canopy coming in a classic, gable end design.

House Porch Extensions

Owing to their size, porches are not always considered extensions by themselves. However, you can choose to make them into extensions by building them larger or wider than most other designs. This will require permission, however. To learn more about getting permission, please see our post on getting planning permission for porches.

Styles for Your Chosen Porch Design

Once you have chosen the porch that best suits your home, there will be a number of ways to add creative touches to it on our porch designer. This includes changing the style of each different feature, once you have selected your favourite layout.

So, whether you would prefer a King Post truss for your canopy porch over Curved Braces or an open gable end, or would prefer your front door to be covered by mullions and a dwarf wall with render panels instead of a balustrade or bannister, we can make it for you.

The features of our porch designs can all be crafted to suit the style of any home, whether your property is Victorian or newly built. All you will need to do is browse the design selection we have and experiment with our product builder until you find the simple or elaborate style that you like the most.

Our Design and Crafting Process

Our process begins with the timber we use to craft our porch designs, which we take from the highest quality green oak and Douglas-fir trees we have available to us. These trees are all sourced sustainably from designated sites in France and are cultivated to be as tall and straight as possible, minimising waste during the manufacturing process. We also plant three new trees for every one used in our work, guaranteeing a steady supply of products for years to come.

Timber Grading

Once the timber has reached our workshops, it will be meticulously checked and inspected by our onsite team of qualified timber graders and carpenters. They’ll do this using the latest in technology, with machines that can accurately pinpoint faults the human eye would otherwise miss.

If any weak, flawed or warped wood is found, it will be responsibly recycled instead of going into our work. Only the strongest and highest quality timber or oak beams and frames should be used when building a house porch, as anything less than this could affect the structural integrity.

Crafting Your Designs

Once the best timber has been chosen, our carpenters will start work on crafting the porch design itself and making it into a kit. Again, by using state-of-the-art machinery that offers extreme precision, they will be able to create each frame without any errors or faults. This ensures each kit we make stays exactly the same in its design, so there should never be any trouble putting the finished product together.

Our Design Technique

Each part of our porch designs, from the columns and canopies to the balustrades, bannisters and mullions, is created using a traditional, specialist technique known as edge jointing, or simply jointing. This process allows for the individual pieces of a kit to be slotted neatly together during installation, resulting in a swift and simple build.

Bringing You Bespoke Options

Customers are always coming to us with designs for the back or front porch extension they want for their home (sometimes they come with layouts and planning drawings already in hand!) and we are always happy to accommodate when they do. Whether they’ve had their own idea for a covered porch that will completely match the style of their Victorian home, or like the sound of one of our own porch styles but think a bespoke canopy design would look better, we will be more than willing to prepare it.

Porch Ideas: Creating a Unique Outdoor Space

Once you have your ideal porch for your property, you will naturally want to utilise the space in a way that best fits you and your needs. There are a number of ways to do this, depending on the porch design you’ve chosen and your own personal interests, and we have shared a few of them here:

• Enclosed front porches often make good coat rooms or storage space for shoes, so you don’t make the interior of your home wet or dirty.
• You may consider adding a bench or seat to an open porch, allowing yourself a place to admire the outdoors, even when it’s raining.
• Porch decorating is an interior design hobby shared by many people, so you may choose to add plants, ornaments or other decorative features.
• If you are planning on wiring the porch and connecting it to the power supply in your home, you may think of hanging up lights for decorative or practical purposes.
• You might choose to paint the wooden aspects of the porch to suit a theme or style that you’ve already established with the rest of your property.

Will Your Design Require Planning Permission?

This may be a worry for many people looking to add a house porch to their property, and we understand this entirely. Planning applications can take a frustratingly long amount of time to put through, and no one wants a DIY project to be delayed by unnecessary restrictions, costs or paperwork. 

Fortunately, you’ll most likely not have to worry about this, as most porch designs are considered permitted development. This means that your local authority will probably not require planning permission before you move ahead with your project.

However, there may be some exceptions to this statement if the layout or roof design of your porch doesn’t adhere to guidelines. This may be the case if you’ve chosen to create a bespoke design for your property that we have then created for you as a kit. To learn more about this, please see our article on planning permission for porches, and to find out if there are any other factors you need to take into consideration before you begin work, take a look at our posted guide on what to think about before you start building a porch.

Buy and Build Your Dream Porch Design Today

If you have been searching for an experienced, professional team to bring you the oak frame or timber porch design you just know will complete your property, look no further than The Porch Specialist.

We take pride in offering a choice of ready-to-make porch kits for properties across the UK, offering our customers as large a selection as possible so they can always have what they want for their homes. You can have your ideal porch design as a kit to put together as soon as the work is signed off and the product is delivered.

Whether you have your heart and mind set on a full-height balustrade or bannister design to greet your guests with boundless countrified charm or would like something sweet and simple in the form of a canopy or wall-mounted design that keeps the rain off your front door, we can put a kit together for you. We’ll even help you create a bespoke layout if you already have an idea for your porch before you come to us.

Contact our team today and we’ll be happy to chat with you about what you would like for your porch, whether you have a completely modern or an old, Victorian home, and we can discuss any specifications that you’ll need covered in the crafting process. We will work together with you to make that perfect porch design a reality.