By now, we’re all familiar with the chic, understated class and eye-catching look of oak porches– but what if you’re not into that? While the Oak Porch UK team can’t guarantee these porch installations will be as eye-catching and practical as oak, there’s other styles you can consider.
Why Consider Alternatives to Oak?
Honestly, we ask the same question! As we’ve looked at before, oak is an incredibly versatile building material. It looks fantastic, and ages well. It’s robust and can stand up to a range of climates and weather with ease. It’s also a green and sustainable construction material that’s excellent at insulating you from the weather. Plus, there’s almost nothing you can’t do with it!
All the same, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all building material. While oak may come close to perfect, there’s still some reasons you may not want to use it.
- Aesthetics: You could be trying to match a very specific look. You can do a lot to adapt oak to perfectly complement most homes, especially by clever use of footers and roofing materials. However, you may decide you really need an exact match to existing building materials.
- Site Issues: Oak has been a staple building material in the UK for millenia because of its unique properties. However, every site is different. You may have particular issues with elevation, location, or soil type that make a different style of building more recommended.
- Design: You may be seeking a very unique design for your porch that would be better supported with specific construction styles, such as the softer, flowing shapes concrete can create.
- Existing Porches: You might be hoping to get an exact match to a design element you already have that was not constructed with wood.
- Weather: Whilst oak has an excellent track record with handling moist conditions, you may need to create deeper foundations or make other adaptations to compensate for a very wet soil or a very windy location, and that might suit a different construction style.
- Other Construction: Your porch addition may not be a stand-alone project. If you already have a construction crew on-site, you may want them to add the porch to the list.
At the end of the day, every homeowner needs the porch of their dreams, no matter what it’s made of.
Other Types of Porches
If you’ve decided an oak porch is not the right type of porch for your home, what other materials can you try?
Brick
Brick and mortar construction is the next most popular porch style after oak porches. Bricks are versatile and can be adapted for a range of situations. There’s also a huge range of available colours and styles, which can add versatility to the project. Brick porches don’t lend themselves well to lofty columns, and vast expanses of brick can look dour, but it can work fantastically where deeper foundations are needed for stability, or where you want to use a lot of glazing.
Cement and Concrete
Poured cement has come a long way in recent years, and you can now use colours and imprinting to make it appear much more aesthetically pleasing. Concrete can be a little more fickle than people expect, with cracks and crumbling often occurring in areas with a large summer to winter temperature fluctuation or where there is a lot of moisture pooling. In the right circumstances, however, you can create some very interesting shapes with poured concrete, and it meshes well with colonnade-type looks and open porches.
Plastic
While plastic may sound a bit tacky off-the-bat, it can be a surprisingly good choice when well-used. While plastic has the shortest lifespan by far of the types of porch we’ve mentioned, it’s light and easy to work with, and you can create some unique looks with it. Using recycled plastic could also be an important environmental consideration for you.
Composites
We can’t really recommend composite porches for general use in the UK climate, as they’re very similar to oak, but far, far weaker and highly susceptible to water damage. However, composite lumber and wood-plastic composite porches are out there and can be very aesthetically pleasing. You would need to plan for a lot of upkeep and early replacement for them to remain safe, strong, and attractive, however.
Polycarbonate
Sleek polycarbonate offers an interesting and different look for porches. In appearance, it’s very similar to glass, but without the weight and risks of breaking. In fact, it can make a great combination material with a variety of others, including oak.
Considerations for Other Porch Styles
When planning your new porch, it’s important to balance three areas:
The right solution for your home should not just look good, it should also be a wise choice for your area, traffic volumes, and general weather conditions. No one wants to have to remove a porch and rebuild it every few years just to keep it looking great! Using a very fussy material that needs a ton of upkeep will quickly suck the joy out of your new addition. Plus, of course, budget is always a consideration for any home improvement project.
At the end of the day, we still believe that oak porches tick all those boxes for the unique- and temperamental- British conditions. These alternate porch styles, however, each have their own pros and cons to consider, and can make a great choice in the right circumstances, too.
What made you choose your oak porch over other styles? Do you love the look, or simply enjoy its practicality? Let us know which type of porch ticks all your boxes!
