Conservatory or Orangery, Priced Side by Side
The short version is that an orangery is a masonry building with a glazed lantern and a conservatory is a glazed building with a roof, and the price follows the brickwork. The longer version is that the rule everyone quotes to tell them apart was withdrawn in 2010, so most pages you will read are separating them by a test that no longer exists. This one is written from the conservatory side, in three-times money.
Average conservatory · against an orangery at 16 m² · installed inc VAT
£9,000 to £18,000 against £30,000 to £35,000
Mixed gradesConservatory band from a national trades directory, October 2024, and £9,000 to £25,000 typical £15,000 across five publishers, Well evidenced. Orangery at 16 m² typical £32,500, Reasonably evidenced, three sources. Checked 20 August 2026.
The two rooms side by side
Conservatory first, because it is the side we hold the deepest data on and the cheaper starting point almost everybody is comparing against.
| What you are comparing | Conservatory | Orangery |
|---|---|---|
| Published band, like for like | £9,000 to £18,000 | £30,000 to £35,000 at 16 m² |
| Typical | £15,000 | £32,500 |
| All in, per m² | £1,500 to £2,000 | £2,000 to £2,500 |
| Evidence grade | Well evidenced, five publishers | Reasonably evidenced, three sources |
| Source and date | Five independent UK publishers, dated Jun 2026, 12 May 2024, 28 Jan 2025, 29 Jul 2025 and 24 Jun 2026 | A national trades directory, orangery guide Mar 2026; a national installer 2026; Precision Extensions 12 Jan 2026 |
| Walls | Mostly glazed, often on a low dwarf wall | Masonry piers or columns with glazing between them |
| Roof | Fully glazed, or replaced with a solid system later | Mostly flat and insulated, with a glazed lantern set into it |
| Building regulations | Usually exempt while it stays thermally separated and under 30 m² | Normally treated as an extension, so regulated work |
Sources: a national trades directory's conservatory guide (June 2026), a UK trades marketplace (12 May 2024), a UK price guide (28 January 2025, also the per m² all-in figure), a second UK price guide (29 July 2025), a UK quote comparison site (24 June 2026), the same trades directory's orangery guide (March 2026), a national installer (2026) and Precision Extensions (12 January 2026). The orangery per m² band is reconciled from four publishers spanning 6.4 times, explained below. Checked 20 August 2026.
What is the difference between a conservatory and an orangery?
Structurally, the difference is how much of the wall is brick. A conservatory is glazed from a low dwarf wall upwards, with a glazed or replacement solid roof carried on lightweight frames. An orangery is built from masonry piers or columns, with glazing set between them and a mostly flat insulated roof pierced by a glazed lantern. More brick, more foundation, more roof structure, and a build that behaves like a small extension on site.
Commercially, the difference is about three times the money at the average and around £500 per m² at the margin. That uplift is the only clean orangery-over-conservatory delta published anywhere, and it comes from one undated specialist page, so we grade it Thin evidence and use it as a sense check rather than a price. Checked 20 August 2026.
Legally, the difference is the exemption. A conservatory can sit outside the Building Regulations under Schedule 2 Class 7 while it stays at ground level, under 30 m², thermally separated and glazed to a significant proportion. An orangery, with its solid roof and masonry walls, normally is not exempt at all. One is a garden room; the other is an extension with better daylight.
The definition changed in 2010
Almost every page that separates these two products quotes the same rule: 75 per cent of the roof and 50 per cent of the walls have to be translucent. It is worth knowing that this test was withdrawn sixteen years ago.
The DCLG circular of 28 September 2010 states that “the definition of conservatory in terms of percentage translucent material as set out in previous editions of the Approved Documents no longer applies”. The live test is that the structure is glazed to a significant proportion, decided case by case by building control. Source: gov.uk, Conservatories and porches, verified 20 August 2026.
This matters commercially, not just pedantically. If you are told a build is an orangery rather than a conservatory because it fails a percentage test, the person telling you is working from a withdrawn document. What decides whether your building is exempt is a judgement by building control on the structure in front of them. The word on the quote does not decide it, and neither does the word on ours.
An orangery, size by size
Every row here is installed and includes VAT. Most of them rest on one publisher, which is why most of them are graded Thin: the orangery market publishes far less than the conservatory market does.
| Row | Low | Typical | High | Evidence | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3m × 3m (9 m²) | £25,000 | not published | £35,000 | Thin | A national installer, 2026 |
| 4m × 3m (12 m²), standard finishes | £30,000 | not published | £32,000 | Reasonably | Precision Extensions 12 Jan 2026, a national installer 2026 |
| 16 m², UK average | £30,000 | £32,500 | £35,000 | Reasonably | A national trades directory, orangery guide, Mar 2026 |
| 4m × 4m (16 m²), total installed | £32,000 | not published | £40,000 | Thin | Double Glazing on the Web, 6 Aug 2025 |
| uPVC, small 4×4m to large 7×7m | £25,000 | not published | £50,000 | Thin | A national trades directory, Mar 2026 |
| Aluminium, small 4×4m to large 7×7m | £40,000 | not published | £90,000 | Thin | A national trades directory, Mar 2026 |
| Hardwood, small 4×4m to large 7×7m | £50,000 | not published | £120,000 | Thin | A national trades directory, Mar 2026 |
| 5m × 5m (25 m²) | no figure | no figure | no figure | Gap | No UK source publishes it. See below |
Checked 20 August 2026. The 25 m² row is a genuine gap: no source we found prices a 5m by 5m orangery, and we will not interpolate one. The nearest anchors are a 25 m² band of £20,000 to £40,000 (PriceYourJob, 29 August 2025) and a premium-spec 4m by 5m at £85,000, four times apart and therefore not a price. Conservatory figures at these footprints are on lean to conservatory prices.
One real project, itemised to the pound
Everything else on this page is a published band. This is one real 4m by 3m orangery in Waterlooville, itemised into six lines that sum to the total, at £33,644 including VAT. Reasonably evidenced as an itemised project, Precision Extensions, 12 January 2026, checked 20 August 2026. It is the only fully itemised project in 222 price rows.
| Line | Cost | Share of the job |
|---|---|---|
| Base and walls | £9,689 | 29% |
| Frames and roof | £11,934 | 35% |
| Structural | £110 | under 1% |
| Installation | £4,235 | 13% |
| Electrics, heating and finishes | £5,576 | 17% |
| Fees | £2,100 | 6% |
| Total | £33,644 | 100% |
The lines are the source's; the rounded percentages are ours. Base and walls are 29 per cent of the job, which is the part a conservatory simply does not have, and fees are real money rather than a rounding. Checked 20 August 2026. For the same arithmetic against a conservatory of your own size, work out what your conservatory will cost.
A five-times gap inside one page
If you have read a few orangery pages you may have seen a figure far below everything on this one. It is the clearest single example of the labelling problem that runs through this whole market, so we explain it rather than ignore it.
One major marketplace prices a “small orangery, 4m by 4m” at £5,000 to £11,500 and the same 4m by 4m footprint at around £25,000, on the same page, in the same month. Neither figure is labelled. The low one is a hardwood structure supply only; the high one is supply and build. It is not dishonest, it is unlabelled, and the effect on a homeowner comparing quotes is the same. We exclude the £5,000 to £11,500 from every band on this site and from everything the site calculates, and we publish the exclusion rather than dropping it quietly. Source: its own orangery cost guide, March 2026, checked 20 August 2026.
Two more pages are worth naming for what they do not contain. Both timberpride.co.uk and westburygr.com publish articles whose URLs promise orangery pricing and which contain no price figures at all. That is a verified negative rather than a failure to find one, and it describes the market fairly: the high end does not publish, so the mid-market marketplaces set the numbers everyone else quotes.
Per square metre, and the disagreement behind it
Published per square metre rates for an orangery span 6.4 times, from £734 to £4,700. That is not a contradiction, it is four different products under one word: one publisher prices a uPVC orangery, another a bespoke glasshouse. Segmenting by specification tier rather than averaging gives a defensible mid-market band of £2,000 to £2,500 per m² all in, Reasonably evidenced across four publishers after reconciliation. It runs Homebuilding at £2,250 (9 March 2022, the only neutral editorial source in the dataset and four years old) against the low end of Glasshouse Architecture and a national trades directory's aluminium row. Checked 20 August 2026.
A whole conservatory build for comparison is £1,500 to £2,000 per m² all in, Thin evidence, one publisher, 28 January 2025, checked 20 August 2026. We treat both as a cross-check on size-banded totals rather than as a way to price a job. The full working, and why the rate falls as the building grows, is at how much a conservatory costs per square metre .
Price the conservatory side
Six questions, about sixty seconds, and an estimate built from the rows above with every source shown.
We price conservatories and conservatory roofs, and we do not pretend to price an orangery build. If the conservatory side is the one you are costing, use use the Conservatory Cost Calculator for your own size band, read conservatory cost for the whole-market figures, or get conservatory roof quotes if the building is already there and the roof is the problem.
Check what your conservatory will cost
We are paid when an installer quotes you. That is why every figure above carries a source, a date and an evidence grade rather than a headline.
The third option, and the halfway house
Above the orangery there is a heavier build again, at £40,000 to £56,000 for a small single-storey job, Thin evidence, one publisher, October 2024, checked 20 August 2026. The three-way picture is on conservatory vs extension.
There is also a halfway house people ask about constantly: keeping the building you have and adding the masonry and the solid roof. Nobody publishes a price for that as a job, and what it is actually made of is set out at converting a conservatory into an orangery.
If the words themselves are the confusing part, one of them is not a legal category at all and usually just means a conservatory with a solid roof, unpicked at what the word sunroom actually means. And if none of these fit the budget, the cheaper routes are all costed at conservatory alternatives.
Questions people ask first
Is an orangery more expensive than a conservatory?
Is it 75 per cent glazing that makes something a conservatory?
Does an orangery need building regulations approval?
Why is one published figure so much lower than the rest?
What does a 5m by 5m orangery come to?
Every figure on this page was last checked 20 August 2026, next check due 20 November 2026. Rows with one publisher behind them are graded Thin, and most of the orangery rows are Thin because the orangery market publishes less than the conservatory market does. Excluded figures are named with the reason rather than dropped.
Find out what yours costs
Six questions, about sixty seconds, and an estimate built from published UK figures with every source shown. Then up to four local installers can quote you, if you want them to.