The sunroom makes for a wonderful backyard or side yard addition to your home. If you’ve ever been in one, you’ve probably noticed that your host has it furnished for a variety of uses, including being a coffee nook or a place to wind down on a summer’s evening.
If you’re considering adding one of these to your home, you’re sure to have a lot of questions. The big one to answer is how much does a sunroom cost?
The cost of building a sunroom ranges between $9,000 and $90,000, with the average price of a three-season room being $22,000.
The wide range is due to the type of construction materials, the size of the room itself, and whether or not you want to enjoy the room part of the year or all year long.
The cost of furnishing a sunroom also has a wide range, depending on the quality and type of furnishings. On average, you can fully furnish a sunroom for less than $1,500.
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Breaking Down the Cost of Adding a Sunroom
We’ll be breaking down the cost of the average two hundred square foot sunroom for this post. As there are different varieties of popular sunrooms, we should clarify that the expenses we break down are associated with a three-season room.
Building a Sunroom
For a three-season room, the average cost is $110 per square foot, for a total of $22,000 on a 200 square foot addition. What is this money put toward?
For any sunroom addition, a base or foundation must be constructed first. This must be solid and graded to hold the amount of weight the addition will place upon it.
The lumber will be the highest material cost. Solid framing and floor decking will eat up more than forty percent of your material budget on most sunroom projects.
The windows will vary in cost depending on the number of windows needed and the quality.
Roofing materials are relatively inexpensive if you use shingles. Since the square area is so small, this cost is quite minimal.
Other variables will add up as miscellaneous costs. Doors, ceiling fans, electrical hookups, and other wants can add more to your budget.
And don’t forget the cost of work permits and licensing. The cost of these will vary by municipality and should always be applied for before work beginning.
Furnishing a Sunroom
Furnishing the sunroom is much less expensive than having it constructed. Even if you equip your new room with a big-screen television and nice sofas and chairs, the total price tag for furnishing one average less than $1,500.
Is A Sunroom Worth The Money?
As we outlined earlier in this post, there can be a substantial amount of cost in having a sunroom added to your home. After reading what all could be involved, you might be wondering if the sunroom is worth the money.
From a purely financial investment standpoint, a sunroom will add up to half the cost of the addition to your home’s value. In other words, if the sunroom has a price tag of $25,000, then you might enjoy a property value increase of up to $12,500.
From a resale point of view, a sunroom on your home makes it more likely to sell in the future.
The extra space acts as a bonus room that can be enjoyed most of the year or all of the year if you live in warmer climates. This alone is worth it to many homeowners.
But people who add sunrooms to their homes don’t generally do so to add financial value or make a quick flip. Most homeowners have a sunroom built to enjoy the benefits of being outside without some of the hassles.
Enjoying the sun in a climate-controlled room without bugs or pests is of great value to many families.
The sunroom is worth it if it’s something you believe you will regularly use.
Do Sunrooms Add To Square Footage?
There is no absolute answer to this question. Whether or not an added sunroom will count as additional square footage depends upon several criteria.
For the sunroom’s area to count, it first must be of similar construction as the original home. If you’re merely attaching the additional room to an exterior wall, it’s probably not going to qualify.
Most likely, to count as additional square footage, the sunroom will have to be integrated into the home’s original frame. Also, the roof of the sunroom should match (or be close in style and quality) the roof of the original structure.
Additionally, the sunroom should be heated and cooled off the same HVAC source as the rest of the home.
If it’s cooled with a window unit or a ceiling fan and heated with baseboard heaters or space heaters, this would likely disqualify the room’s area in a square footage calculation.
Are Sunrooms Considered Living Space?
Sunrooms are considered living space because they are enclosed rooms that are accessed by an entry from the main structure.
Many people spend more time in these sunrooms than they spend waking hours in any other room in their homes.
As we pointed out earlier in this post, while sunrooms are a living space, their square footage may not count into the square footage calculation of your home. For the reasons why your sunroom would or would not qualify, read back earlier in the post.
Can You Turn A Sunroom Into A Bedroom?
If you need an additional bedroom, you might be considering the sunroom as a possibility. Are you able to turn a sunroom into one?
Whether or not you can alter an existing sunroom to create a bedroom will depend on the original construction of the sunroom and your budget.
First, for a room to be considered a bedroom, it must have at least one window and one closet.
Odds are, your sunroom was built with a lot of windows but no closet space. This can be remedied by building out a closet and possibly shelving along the sunroom wall that adjoins the original external wall of your house.
The bedroom must also be climate controlled by the same system that heats and cools your house’s main part. So if you don’t have vents running underneath the floors of this addition, you’ll want to consider doing so.
But keep in mind that if your HVAC unit is already at or near capacity based on your home’s square footage, you might require upgrading your unit to accommodate the additional space.
Be sure that the sunroom is adequately insulated. This won’t be an issue if the sunroom is an actual four season room.
But if it’s a two or three season addition, not only will you need proper HVAC connections, you’ll also need to establish a way to insulate the room from the elements.
Depending on the construction of your sunroom, this may or may not be possible.
In Closing
The total cost will depend on the finished size, the style, and the components you want to be added to the sunroom by way of amenities and furnishings.
While you and your family might spend a great deal of time in this room, it may or may not add to the square footage of your home. For it to do so, specific criteria must be met.
But while it might not make your home bigger in a legal sense, folks who have one built find that they recoup half the construction cost by increasing the home’s value. These rooms also make homes easier to sell.
You might be able to convert your sunroom into a legitimate bedroom. Whether or not this is possible will depend on how the sunroom was constructed and how much money you are willing to put into this project.
If you found this post about sunrooms to be helpful, then we believe that you’ll enjoy reading the following posts about home improvements:
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