Want a conservatory, sunroom, or orangery in your house? Here's what to consider.

Sunlight. That’s the common denominator of sunrooms, conservatories, and orangeries. All three are designed to let in more rays than a standard room does. But beyond that, they have some differences.

The most common of the three room types—and the least expensive—is the sunroom. These are simple glass-enclosed porches that serve as three- or four-season rooms, often built on an aluminum structure that may or may not be integrated into the architecture of the house.

Conservatories, by contrast, are often set apart as a special accent or focal point to a house. According to the National Gallery of Art, they began cropping up in England in the 1500s, designed to protect citrus trees and other fragile plants during the winter. Today’s conservatories often have decorative elements such as gables, eaves, and finials at the top of a dome roof. “It’s going to have a lot of glass,” says Jane Ann Forney of FORNEY + Architecture, “and it really stands out as a separate structure.”

Orangeries are the least common of the three room types in the United States—possibly because in Europe they were once symbols of a privileged elite and didn’t meld well with America’s relatively egalitarian spirit. Modern orangeries have more traditional construction elements (e.g., brick) forming the walls and are more likely to have a pop-up skylight, transom, and flat roof. Many don’t stand apart from the house’s main structure.

Any kind of house could accommodate one or two of these rooms, Forney says, but certain pairings wouldn’t look right—for example, a streamlined modern house doesn’t work with an ornate conservatory, nor does a fancy mansion with a simple sunroom. There are a couple of questions to ask yourself as you’re deciding whether to add one of these rooms to your home or to include one in a new build.

First, in which direction will the room face? If you have the traditional goal of keeping plants, then you want it to face south. But during a St. Louis summer, a south-facing three-season room will get hot, so you may want more roof and less glass on top. Speaking of temperature: Do you want to heat and cool the addition from the floor, the ceiling, or exposed ductwork? It may be easiest to add on to the house’s existing system.

Second: What type of glass and coating should you use? Certain coatings help dust, rain, and dirt slide off but won’t guard against bird bombardments. “A lot of people think they want glass on the roof but change their minds when they think about having to clean it on a regular basis,” Forney says.

Forney recently designed a semicircle conservatory for a new home in Town & Country. In the middle of the structure, which was built by Maryland-based Tanglewood Conservatories, is a circular cocktail bar. Beneath its center is a trap door leading down to a brick-lined wine cellar. What Forney discovered after the build is that at certain times of day, shafts of light illuminate the cellar. “That wasn’t even something I thought about,” she says. “It was a happy side effect.”

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