Designing for how you actually live: a wellness-led extension in Englefield Green
Planning permission achieved for an extension which is orientated to wellness and entertainment.
At our project in Englefield Green, Surrey, the brief was clear from the start: design a space that supports the way this family genuinely wants to live – not just a larger house, but one that makes health, recovery, and spending time together feel effortless.
The centrepiece of the project is a rear extension that creates an indoor-outdoor living environment built around recovery as much as entertaining. A generous covered terrace opens directly from the main living space, sheltered beneath an exposed rafter ceiling and connected to a deep timber-framed pergola. The structure provides shade without closing the space off – light filters through from above, and the boundary between inside and outside dissolves. A stainless-steel outdoor kitchen and bar run along one wall, with bar stools at the counter and a large wall-mounted screen opposite, so the family can cook, eat and watch sport in the same uninterrupted space.
Directly adjacent, a standalone outbuilding houses a sauna and a changing room, with a cold plunge positioned in between the two. The sequence is deliberate: move from sauna to cold plunge to changing room, without re-entering the main house. For a family that takes recovery seriously, it removes every friction point from the routine.
The material palette holds the composition together. Red brick pavers and timber clad jacuzzi and plunge surrounds tie back to the rest of the design. The dark-stained pergola and outbuilding cladding provide a consistent frame across the whole rear elevation. Oak columns carry the roof load through both structures, introducing warmth at a human scale.
The project sits on a generous plot in Englefield Green, a leafy residential area on the edge of Windsor Great Park in the borough of Runnymede. Working in close consultation with the council’s tree officer, we developed a foundation strategy – using above-ground ground beams and flexible screw pile locations informed by a root radar survey – to protect a prominent tree directly adjacent to the extension footprint. The design does not compromise around this constraint; it was resolved at a technical level so that the architecture could be delivered in full.
Thank you to Cogley Structural Solutions and PJC for all their help in getting this planning over the line and we look forward to working with them further as this project progresses.
If you are looking for a residential architect to design a wellness-led extension in Surrey or the wider South West London area, get in touch.