The ideal garden room is somewhat open to the elements while offering a measure of protection from them, writes Robert O'Byrne.

Home improvement programmes on television are forever advising us to treat our gardens as an extension of the house, in effect as another room.

Outside, we're informed, is the new inside. Only someone forgot to tell this to the Irish climate which continues to be as unremittingly wet as ever.

Global warming's all very well but it just means we now get tepid rather than cold rain falling on us; the amount remains the same, only the temperature has been changed. Which means the expensive decking laid in hundreds of thousands of Irish back gardens is consistently damp and coated in a fine layer of lichen, the hot tub is a breeding ground for Legionnaire's Disease and the hammock has decomposed down to a few spindly threads.

But it doesn't have to be so, there is an alternative, namely to recognise the limitations of our weather and plan accordingly. That means developing a space unable to be classified specifically as either inside or outside but instead as something between the two.

It is, in other words, a garden room somewhat open to the elements even while offering a certain measure of protection from them.

This is precisely what you'll find attached to Nicky and Peter Kruseman's Co Wicklow home. The couple and their three teenage children moved into the newly-built house three years ago delighted to find somewhere big enough to accommodate a studio for Nicky, a former graphic designer and illustrator who now paints and receives a lot of portrait commissions. "If I've got a deadline coming up," she says, "I'll paint all day and all night till six in the morning."

Hence the need for a studio but there are times when Nicky prefers to paint plein air and that's one of the advantages of having a garden room. Attached to the L-shaped kitchen/family room, it looks out across the Irish Sea - a marvellous and constantly shifting source of inspiration for any artist although some pretty harsh winds can sweep in from the water.

So it's as well that the garden room provides Nicky with the shelter of a pitched roof, the centre of which is made from glass to admit extra natural light.

Below this, two sides of the structure are full-length windows looking into the house; these windows can be opened to encourage a greater sense of the outdoors coming inside and vice-versa.

Meanwhile the other two sides of the room are unglazed and interrupted only by a few square columns required to support the roof. It's all very simple and yet highly effective, the perfect compromise between indoors and out.

The garden room's floor is sensibly covered in inexpensive, hard-wearing tiles that look as though they're made from stone but are actually fired porcelain.

Easy to wash and maintain, they're in an appropriately neutral shade because nothing could compete with the splendid garden Peter has designed beyond the room's immediate boundaries which are marked by a line of ponds traversed by a small bridge.

Peter was also responsible for the low painted tables scattered about the garden room; using MDF, he made them for a party the couple held last year.

The rest of the furniture tends to be of wicker because this material is better able to withstand the depredations of rain than anything else.

Plus, even if the climate doesn't suggest the tropics, wicker instantly gives the place an attractive colonial atmosphere, as though this were a set for The Letter and Bette Davis was about to confess that yes, it's true, she did shoot her lover. That impression is only enhanced by the sprinkling of woven containers holding dwarf palm trees and the lanterns ready to be lit when darkness falls.

The Kruseman garden room is in near-constant use, thanks in no small measure to its situation; facing almost due east, it's the perfect spot to watch the sun rise while "at night", says Nicky, "we can see the moon shimmering on the sea".

Well-sheltered, thanks to Peter's judicious planting in the garden proper, the room is ideal for meals during summer months, beginning with breakfast and ending with drinks after dinner. "And every time we have a party, people always end up out here."

Although this may be also thanks to a sound system that's been discreetly installed, with speakers tucked into the eaves.

This is a terrifically versatile room, capable of meeting almost any demand placed on it from acting as an artist's open-air studio to becoming an alfresco dining area. The decoration, furnishings and colour palette have wisely all been kept low-key since the surroundings created by Peter Kruseman offer unbeatable competition. Should this garden room be classified as inside or outside? The answer is that it's both and therefore meets the requirements of every home improvement programme.