Garage bar corner ideas that work in a real garage

Where the bar goes

The bar goes in the corner furthest from the up-and-over door. That corner is the warmest, the least draughty and the furthest from the street, and it is out of the way of the door itself, which swings inward and takes the first stretch of ceiling and wall with it. A bar built against the door end is a bar you cannot open the door past, and one that gets the weather every time you do.

Then consider the wall it backs onto. An integral garage shares a wall with your own house; a garage on a semi or a terrace often shares one with next door. Glasses, a fridge compressor, music and a dartboard all carry through a shared wall, so the bar wants to be on a wall you own on both sides if there is a choice. It also wants a socket within a lead's length, because a fridge and a lamp are coming.

And if the car stays in the garage, check the car door swing before the bar is fixed anywhere. A counter that sits where a car door opens is a counter you will dent, or a car you will scratch, by the second week. Draw the car on the floor in tape with its doors open and put the bar outside that line, even if that means a shorter bar than you had in mind.

How much bar you actually need

Less than the photographs suggest. A garage bar is a place to lean with a drink while someone throws a dart, and that is one run of counter, room for one person behind it and two or three in front, and a shelf behind for the bottles. Anything more is a fitted kitchen in a cold room, and it eats the floor a single garage does not have to spare.

Height is worth getting right because it fixes the stools. A kitchen worktop sits at about 90cm; a bar sits higher, and bar counters are commonly sold at around 105 to 110cm, but that is a typical size rather than a rule. Bar stools are sold to match a stated counter height, so decide the counter first, then buy stools to suit it, and check the listing rather than assuming. A stool that is wrong by a hand is uncomfortable for as long as you own it.

The back bar can be simpler than the front. A freestanding five-tier shelving unit that goes together with a mallet and stands against the wall makes a back bar that needs no drilling, which is the answer in a rented garage or on a wall that will not take a plug. Bottles on the eye-level shelf, glasses on the one below, the ugly stuff at the bottom behind a curtain.

The fridge problem

Most people find out about this after the fridge is in. A domestic fridge is designed to work in a room within a stated temperature range, printed on its rating plate as a climate class, and an unheated UK garage in winter drops below the bottom of that range for many models. When it does, the thermostat reads the room as cold enough and stops running, and the freezer compartment, if it has one, quietly thaws.

So before buying, read the rating plate or the maker's specification for the ambient range, and if the garage is unheated look for a fridge stated to work in a cold room. A fridge also needs air around the back and the top to shed heat, so a tight alcove under the counter is the wrong place for it unless the maker says it is designed to be built in.

The other thing a fridge does is run all day. On a detached garage fed by a single spur from the house, the fridge shares that supply with the heater, the lights and whatever is charging, so it is worth knowing what the spur can carry before the bar fills up with appliances. An electrician can tell you in ten minutes; a tripped circuit on a winter evening will tell you later.

What to build it from

There is no need to buy a bar. The best garage bars are built from something else, because a garage forgives a rough edge and punishes anything precious. What matters is a top you can wipe, a height that suits the stools, and a front that hides the fridge and the crates. The options below all work; pick by what you already have and what you can cut.

Whatever it is built from, seal the top. A garage is damp and a bar gets wet, and an unsealed timber top marks the first evening. Oil or varnish it, or use a laminate worktop and seal the cut edges, because the chipboard core swells the moment water reaches it. Keep the front closed if you can: the crates, the empties and the fridge are what you are hiding.

Lighting the bar, and the wall behind it

The bar is the one corner of the garage that should never be lit by the central fitting. Warm light, low down, behind the bottles or under the lip of the counter, on its own switch, is what makes it feel like somewhere to sit rather than a shelf in a shed. A single lamp on the counter does more than a strip round every edge, and it can be tried on a plug before anything is wired.

The wall behind the bar is the feature wall of the room, so give it one big thing rather than many small ones. A clock is the classic, and in a garage it has a practical job too: a bar clock that reads across the room tells people when to go home. The two in our range are silent-sweep movements, which matters here because a hard, bare garage makes a ticking clock loud. One is a plain raised-numeral face; the other is a set of separate numerals you place yourself, so it scales to the wall rather than the wall to it.

If the dartboard is at the same end, keep the throw and the bar traffic apart. A board on the end wall with the oche running down the garage is fine; a bar beside the board where people stand with drinks in the line of a bounce-out is not. Put the bar on the side wall of the social end and the board on the end wall, and nobody crosses the throw to get a drink.