How Do You Get Electricity to a Garden Cabin?

A garden cabin without power is a shed with nice windows. As soon as you want to work, host guests or use the space through the winter, you need lighting, sockets and heating — and that means getting a safe, properly sized electricity supply from the house to the cabin.

It's one of the most common questions we're asked, and the answer is reassuringly straightforward. It does need planning, though, and it's far easier to get right before the base is laid than after the cabin is finished.

The Usual Method: A Buried Cable From the House

For most garden cabins in the UK, power comes from the house's own supply. A qualified electrician adds a dedicated circuit at the main consumer unit and runs a suitably rated cable to the cabin.

That cable is usually steel-wire armoured cable (often shortened to SWA), buried in a trench at a safe depth with warning tape laid above it. Where the cable can't be buried — along a wall, say — it's fixed and protected appropriately instead. Running an ordinary extension lead or a loose cable across the lawn is never a safe long-term solution.

The cable size depends on two things: how much power the cabin will draw, and how far it is from the house. A longer run needs a thicker cable to avoid voltage drop, which is one reason your electrician will want to know the exact position of the cabin early on.

A Consumer Unit in the Cabin

At the cabin end, the supply usually feeds a small consumer unit of its own, which splits the power into separate circuits for lighting, sockets and any dedicated loads such as a heater or an electric shower. This keeps the installation tidy, safe and easy to isolate.

Our real-project write-up on fitting modern utilities into a solid timber cabin shows what a consumer unit and neatly run trunking look like in practice. In single-skin timber walls, cables are generally surface-mounted in trunking; in insulated twin-skin walls they can often be hidden in the cavity.

Work Out What You'll Actually Use

Before anyone digs a trench, list what the cabin needs to power. A garden office with a laptop, monitor, lighting and a small heater has very different needs from a guest cabin with a kitchenette, an electric shower and a hot water heater.

Things worth thinking about:

Heating — usually the biggest load. Panel heaters, an air-to-air heat pump or underfloor heating all have different requirements. Our guide to what it costs to run a garden office compares the options.
Kitchen or bathroom — hobs, kettles and showers draw a lot of power at once. See timber cabins with bathrooms for what's involved.
Outdoor lighting and an EV charger — sometimes easier to plan alongside the cabin supply.
Future plans — sizing the cable generously now costs little compared with digging it up again later.

Don't Forget Data

While the trench is open, it's worth laying an outdoor-rated data cable or a spare duct alongside the power cable. Wi-Fi rarely reaches the bottom of the garden reliably, and a wired connection is the most dependable fix — our article on how to get Wi-Fi to a garden office explains the options. Power and data should be separated as your electrician advises.

Plan It Alongside the Base

The best moment to plan the electrics is when you plan the foundations. Your installer can leave an entry point in the base or floor for the cable, so it comes up neatly inside the cabin rather than through a hole drilled later. Our guide to preparing a timber cabin base covers what to sort out before installation day.

Who Should Do the Work?

Electrical work on a new circuit to an outbuilding should be carried out by a qualified, registered electrician. In England and Wales, much of this work falls under building regulations, and a registered electrician can self-certify it and issue the appropriate certificate — keep that paperwork, as you may need it when you sell your home or insure the cabin. Requirements can differ in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and depending on the job, so check with your electrician for your circumstances.

The cabin itself may also need some thought on the planning side. Many garden cabins can fall under permitted development, depending on size, height, position and intended use — a cabin you plan to sleep in or run a business from may be treated differently from a simple garden office. Our planning permission guide is a good place to start.

Getting It Right From the Start

As family-run timber cabin specialists since 1985, we help customers from first idea through design, delivery, installation and final use — and power is one of the things we always talk through early. Tell us what you'll use the cabin for and where it will sit, and we can make sure the design, base and cable entry points are ready for your electrician.

Planning a garden cabin with power? Browse our timber cabin collection to find the right design, then request a quote and tell us how you plan to use the space.