Porch or pergola, which solution for which project?
At first glance, pergolas and porch are totally different pieces of equipment, if only on a visual level. After all, if the former is purely an outside element, the latter expands the home organically. However, this distinction is less clear in terms of use.
Porch or pergola, the reasons for making a choice
In some cases, pergola and porch are two conversion solutions which may answer to a similar need, but in different ways.
- converting outside volumes following the purchase of an ancient house to renovate;
- expand the living area of a house in direction of the garden;
- provide the home with equipment meant for cutting energy consumption;
- a terrace overly exposed in summer isn’t taken advantage of as much as it could be and requires the construction more pleasant equipment.
The hesitation is all the more understandable than current technical advances are more and more involved in getting rid of some differences between porches and pergolas, even though they remain different per se. These days, most pergolas include full glass partition, while sliding bay windows provide a maximum opening to porches, shall the user wish so.
The porch, a true expansion of the house
A living room like any other
Modern porches are no longer like the winter gardens of yore, overheated in summer and frosty in the middle of winter Current solutions rely on aluminium profiles as those provided by Installux and on sophisticated glazing which offer excellent performances. Well designed and well assembled, glazing and profiles provide customised thermal and acoustic insulation, suited to the porch’s exposure and its environment, to the local climate or the livability needs.
This allows the new porches to be liveable all year round, hence turning them into full part living rooms. Added to all the benefits in terms of comfort and well-being provided by large glazed surfaces and sunlight! In practice, it is possible to turn a porch into a kitchen, lounge, living room, game room, or a shower room, sports hall or even a bedroom.
The porch in terms of house projects
The aluminium porch is truly a house expansion. It takes part in an approach aiming to refurbishing the house, beyond the scope of a simple additional room. The house expansion provided by setting the porch up will redistribute the inside refurbishment of the house, for instance by relocating the kitchen and allowing to refurbish the former kitchen into a new bathroom. Overall, including a glazed extension will allow the light and heat to beam throughout the entire house.
It’s equally a good way to rethink the whole house, both in terms of inside organisation and opening towards the outside, the garden or the terrace.
Original solutions for a year-round operation
The porch allows to revisit the idea of a room’s standard use, such as a bedroom, a living room or a kitchen, by creating an exclusive opening on its outside environment. It allows the creation of utterly exclusive spaces, such as:
- an indoor swimming pool,
- a sports hall with view,
- a boudoir surrounded by greenery,
- a little astronomy observatory.
For new houses, and sometimes renovation projects, a bioclimatic porch allows to cut the energy consumption of the house drastically.
The aluminium pergola, a modular solution to enjoy outdoor spaces
A high-technicality equipment for better performances and a greater comfort
Aluminium pergolas no longer are the fine wooden structures and supports for climbing plants of the antiquity! Far from the case, they are high-performance design and technical objects allowing to improve the comfort both inside the terrace and the house.
Equipped with aluminium adjustable slats, the pergola may vary the sunlight intake on the terrace or in the house to your heart’s content, through a bay window. A suitable arrangement of the slats thus provides natural ventilation to the terrace or the garden.
It can equally be provided with many accessories, if not glass panels, drawing it closer to ancient solariums. Through its action on the facade, the pergola acts as much on the inside as on the outside of a house, making its bioclimatic purpose clear.
Rediscover outdoor leisure space
The pergola is a fix equipment albeit extremely adaptable. It can be leant against a house or fitted away from it, free-standing. The aluminium models, which are fine and tough at the same time, come either in small dimension or on the opposite, very wide, with its footprint always kept to a minimum. This design adaptability allows to position a pergola ideally in order to protect all outdoor leisure whether from the intense sun at noon or occasional showers. And so, you may find pergola over a terrace an outdoor pool, a big barbecue, garden furniture or even a tennis court.
Therefore, the pergola doesn’t meet the same needs than the porch. While the latter is an interface between the house and the outdoor space, the pergola is directly designed to meet the needs for leisure and recreation linked to these outdoor spaces. In other terms, while the porch leads to the garden or the terrace, the pergola directly protects the areas favourable for leisure, games and sports.
While the porch is ideal for projects which consist in broadening the living area by expanding the existing house, the pergola is rather meant for outdoor projects.