Perhaps because there is that separation and the beautiful surroundings of your garden, there is a lot of room for creativity when creating a garden room, which leads to some incredibly imaginative ideas for what to do with it.

From home gyms to offices, dining rooms to miniature gaming arcades, a garden room can be converted to almost any use.

One of the most fascinating of these is a garden room bar, which goes beyond a traditional garden dining room by including glasses, optics and the room to express yourself, host parties and keep connected to friends, family and neighbours.

Thankfully, with a garden room being such a blank canvas, a bar or mini pub in your garden can be a very fun and deeply rewarding build. Here is everything you need to make it perfect.

Wet Or Dry Bar?

There are a lot of considerations when it comes to making a home bar, but the first consideration to make is whether you want a wet bar or a dry bar.

A wet bar is a counter with a sink attached to it, similar to a bar in a pub, club or cocktail bar. They tend to allow you to serve drinks quicker, clean glasses and keep everything neat, but it does require a plumber to fit a running water supply to your bar.

By contrast, a dry bar is essentially a bar counter. It lacks a sink and means you have to walk into the house to clean glasses, but you can store more glasses in the bar, and it is far easier to build by yourself.

Fridge

Unless you plan to run back and forth fetching bottles, you are probably going to want to buy a fridge to store cans and bottles of beer, as well as fruit juices, soft drinks and other ingredients for mixers.

Depending on how many people you plan to entertain, a minifridge might be enough, but in practice, you will likely need something a little larger or more specialised.

If you are going down the draught beer route, kegerators can help you extend the life of your beer barrels, and beverage stations allow for a much more efficient way to store drinks under the bar, but a typical fridge with a glass door will suffice for most other people.

As well as this, do not forget an ice maker. So many drinks will need ice, and it saves a lot of journeys to the icebox in the kitchen.

Bar Equipment

Where a lot of the fun begins when making a garden room bar is getting all of the equipment together. How you choose to set up the shelves, optics, glasses, measures, shakers, stirrers, and straws is all a matter of personal preference, and you have a lot of choices for which types of glasses you want.

If you want a complete bar set, then you will need pint glasses, half-pint glasses, shot glasses and a myriad of cocktail glasses if you plan to try out some mixology, although the latter you can pick and choose from as you like.

Make sure you have enough for the volume of guests you are likely to have, but as this is a home bar, feel free to play fast and loose with the rules of keeping a bar.

Drinks

The centrepiece of any home bar is the drinks on offer, and the wonderful part of this is that anything goes when it comes to which drinks you choose. You can stock just your favourites, try to maintain a full bar, or anything in between.

With beers, ciders, wines and other self-contained drinks, choose your favourites and keep them refrigerated, but for spirits and cocktails, here are the basics you need.

  • Whiskey – Bourbons are a cornerstone of cocktails, although rye and even scotch whisky can create some spectacular results.
  • Rum – Typically, you need a white rum and a dark or spiced rum to make the vast majority of rum cocktails.
  • Tequila – Critical for margaritas, a blanco tequila is an essential bottle to have.
  • Gin – A classic dry gin will be enough to make a Gin and Tonic, but there are so many senses to explore when it comes to gin cocktails.
  • Vodka – There are plenty of budget-friendly options perfect for tall drinks and basic mixes, but feel free to pick up any flavours you like too.

Outside of these, choose your liqueurs of choice, and make sure to pack the following:

  • A complement of fruit juices, with orange, lemon and lime, cranberry and pineapple the most essential cartons to pick, as well as tomato juice if you like a Bloody Mary.
  • Soft drinks, but especially cola, lemon-lime, ginger ale, tonic and sparkling water.
  • Bitters, especially if you plan on making Old Fashioneds or other traditional cocktails.
  • Sugar, which can be used on its own or added to water to make simple syrup.
  • Grenadine, a pomegranate syrup that is the centrepiece of the Tequila Sunrise.
  • Milk or cream.
  • Worcestershire Sauce, for spicy drinks.

As well as this, make sure to add any fruits (and a chopping board) for garnish.