Conservatory and Orangery Cost in 2026: Prices, Rules and Heating

The simpler the shape, the cheaper the conservatory. A lean-to has one roof slope and the fewest frame sections. An Edwardian is a plain box with a pitched roof, which gives the most usable floor for the money. A Victorian's faceted bay needs specially made corner sections and a more complicated roof over the bay, which Trade2Base says adds about a day on site. A P-shape is in effect two rooms, a lean-to with a Victorian or Edwardian at one end, and needs a wide back wall.

The frame material moves the price as much as the shape. Trade2Base adds about 20% for aluminium and 30 to 50% for timber; BestBuilders puts aluminium at 20 to 40% more than uPVC and hardwood at £20,000 to £45,000 or more. A dwarf wall, the low brick wall under the windows, costs more than glazing to the floor: BestBuilders puts the brickwork at roughly £1,000 to £3,000.

Where you live matters too. BestBuilders puts London 25 to 35% above the UK average and the South East 15% above, and Wales, Scotland and the North 5 to 12% below. If you want a room you can use all year, compare the price with a brick extension: our house extension cost guide puts a single storey at about £1,700 to £2,400 per m².

MyJobQuote notes that prices per square metre run higher on small conservatories because the fixed costs are similar at any size, and BestBuilders puts a standard uPVC conservatory at roughly £1,500 to £2,500 per m² including the base. So doubling the floor area does not double the price.

Size also decides which rules apply. A conservatory of more than 30 m² loses its exemption from the Building Regulations, and one that reaches more than 3m from the back of a semi or terrace, or 4m from a detached house, needs the council's prior approval or planning permission. Both are explained below.

An orangery has solid brick or block piers between the windows, usually built as an insulated cavity wall, and a flat insulated roof with a parapet and a glazed lantern in the middle. Trade2Base breaks a typical orangery down as £4,000 to £9,000 for the groundworks and base, £5,000 to £12,000 for the brickwork and £2,500 to £6,000 for a single lantern on a medium orangery, supplied. It is finished like a room inside, plastered and decorated.

The solid roof is why orangeries are warmer than conservatories, and also why most are not exempt from the Building Regulations: Trade2Base says most need full approval, and building control fees and a structural engineer for any steel beam add £500 to £1,500. Trade2Base puts an orangery at 40 to 80% more than a comparable conservatory, and 15 to 30% less than a brick extension with a tiled roof of the same size.

All five guides come from websites that put homeowners in touch with installers or sell to the trade: MyJobQuote, ExpertSure, BestBuilders and BookaBuilderUK collect quotes from firms for homeowners, and Trade2Base sells marketing software to tradespeople. Only BestBuilders explains its method, a cost model checked against published quotes, so treat every range as a guide to what a quote should look like, not a price.

The biggest single reason they disagree is what the price includes. Trade2Base's figures leave out the base, which it prices at £1,500 to £3,000 for standard foundations on good ground, and VAT at 20%, while BestBuilders includes both. Ground conditions are the next biggest: BestBuilders adds £1,800 to £4,200 for piled foundations where the ground is poor, the site slopes or tree roots are within 5m.

Polycarbonate is light, quick to fit and cheap, but the guides agree on its faults: it is noisy in rain, and the room overheats in summer and loses heat in winter. Glass is heavier, so the frame has to be built for it, and it is usually sold with a self-cleaning or solar control coating. A solid roof is a lightweight insulated frame finished with thin tiles or slate-effect panels, often with roof windows to let light in. BestBuilders calls the solid roof the usual choice on new conservatories since 2023.

The roof is also where most of the summer heat comes in. Solar control glass costs £800 to £1,500 extra on ExpertSure's figures and £1,400 to £2,800 on BestBuilders'. A solid roof changes the rules that apply to the conservatory, as the next sections explain.

This is the most common energy upgrade for an old conservatory. A solid roof stops most of the summer overheating and cuts winter heat loss, and the room becomes quieter in rain. The price depends on the size of the roof and the system: MyJobQuote puts a conversion at £6,000 to £10,000 if the existing foundations and dwarf walls are strong enough to keep, and BestBuilders at between £5,500 and £11,500.

Because the new roof has to meet the Building Regulations, ask the installer who will apply to building control and who will check the base and frame can carry the extra weight. A new roof built to today's standard should reach a U-value of 0.15, the limit Approved Document L sets for a new roof in an existing home, and you should get a completion certificate at the end. Keep it for when you sell.

On our model, an older 4m by 3m conservatory heated to 21°C by electric heaters through the heating season costs about £730 a year, and about £490 with a solid roof. At about £240 a year, the cheapest conversion takes about 25 years to pay for itself in energy alone, and longer if you heat the room less. Most people make the change for comfort, not the bill. Expect the room to be darker unless the new roof has windows in it.

In summer, sunlight passes through the glass and warms the floor, the furniture and the air. Warm surfaces give their heat off as infrared, which glass does not let back out easily, so the heat builds up. A glass roof faces the high summer sun for most of the day, and a conservatory is a small room with little heavy material to soak up the heat, so it warms quickly. Opening roof vents and doors, blinds (£500 to £2,000 on ExpertSure's figures, or £1,500 to £3,000 on Trade2Base's), solar control glass or a solid roof all help.

In winter the same glass loses heat fast, and its cold inner surface makes the room feel colder than the thermostat says. In our model of an older 4m by 3m conservatory, the glass walls lose about 45% of the heat on a cold day, the roof about 35% and draughts and air changes about 14%. That is why replacing the roof, the largest single surface, makes the biggest difference.

The heat lost on a cold day is also the size of heater you need: about 2.5 kW for an older 4m by 3m conservatory and about 1.1 kW for a new one with a solid roof. Few people heat a conservatory all winter as they heat a living room. Used on some evenings and weekends with the heater on a thermostat, it costs a fraction of the figures in the table.

Electricity costs about three times as much as gas per kWh, 26.32p against 7.97p, so the house's gas central heating is the cheapest way to warm the room. But extending the house's heating system into a conservatory ends its exemption from the energy rules of the Building Regulations, and it must then be built to the standard of an extension. The Planning Portal describes an exempt conservatory as having an independent heating system with its own temperature and on/off controls, such as an electric heater on a thermostat. Fixed electric heaters or underfloor heating still have to meet the wiring rules.

The cheapest heat of all is the heat you do not lose. A conservatory left unheated, with the door to the house kept shut, costs nothing to run and still works as a buffer against the cold on that side of the house. For a room you want to use every day of the year, a solid roof or a brick extension built to today's standards costs far less to heat.

The limits count the conservatory together with any earlier extensions, so an extension added by an earlier owner uses up part of the allowance. Prior approval for the larger 6m or 8m depths means telling the council through a prior approval application before you build; it is not available on designated land or a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Designated land includes conservation areas, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and World Heritage Sites, where the Planning Portal advises asking the council before starting any work. A listed building needs listed building consent for any significant work, inside or out. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own rules. If you are unsure, ask your council's planning team before you sign a contract.

Being treated as an extension is a big step for a glass room. Under paragraph 10.7, a new extension's roof should reach a U-value of 0.15, its walls 0.18 and its windows 1.4, and the total area of windows, roof windows, rooflights and doors should not exceed 25% of its floor area, plus the area of any windows and doors in the house wall it covers. A conservatory is far above that, so it would have to show by calculation, under paragraphs 10.9 or 10.10, that it loses no more heat than an extension that meets the limits. In practice that means a solid roof, more solid wall or better glass.

So the two common ways to lose the exemption by accident are knocking through to make one open-plan room, and adding a radiator run from the boiler. Both are worth doing only as part of a proper extension with building control approval. A solid roof also brings the roof under the Building Regulations, and Trade2Base says most orangeries need full approval. These rules are for England; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland set their own.

BestBuilders adds 3 to 4 weeks for the survey, design and manufacture before work starts. Trade2Base tells installers to allow 4 to 8 weeks for a fabricator to make a simple conservatory and 8 to 12 weeks for a P-shape, and BookaBuilderUK puts the installation itself at 2 to 4 weeks.

• Ask for the base, any dwarf walls, the frame, the roof, the glazing, doors, electrics, flooring and VAT priced separately.
• Ask for the U-value of the glass, and of the roof if it is solid, and whether the roof glass has a solar control coating.
• Ask how the conservatory will stay exempt from the Building Regulations, or, for a solid roof or an orangery, who will apply to building control and hand you the completion certificate.
• Ask what happens if the ground needs deeper foundations, or a drain runs under the site, and what that would cost.
• Ask about the guarantee on the work and the materials, and whether it is insured if the firm stops trading.

We do not recommend conservatory installers yet, and no link on this page is paid. When we do, every firm will have to meet our trusted supplier standard. If you are weighing a conservatory against a brick room, our extension cost calculator prices the alternative for your home.

Conservatory and orangery prices: MyJobQuote, How much does a conservatory cost in the UK? (updated 3 November 2026); Trade2Base, Conservatory costs UK (8 June 2026, base and VAT excluded) and Trade2Base, Orangery costs UK 2026 (14 June 2026); ExpertSure, UK conservatory prices 2026 (prices stated as verified October 2026); BestBuilders, Conservatory cost UK 2026 (updated 30 August 2026, VAT included, from its own cost model); BookaBuilderUK, How much does it cost to build a conservatory in 2026? (published 1 July 2026). All read on 11 November 2026.

Planning rules from the Planning Portal: Conservatories, planning permission and Extensions, planning permission, which summarise Class A of the General Permitted Development (England) Order 2015, and the Interactive House answer on changing the roof on a conservatory. Building Regulations from the Planning Portal's Conservatories, building regulations page and Approved Document L, Volume 1: Dwellings, 2021 edition incorporating 2023 amendments: paragraphs 0.14, 10.7, 10.9, 10.10 and 10.12, and Table 4.2.

Heating costs from our heat model and the room heat loss method of our radiator model, with energy prices from the Ofgem price cap for October to December 2026. Full method on our methodology and data sources pages.