Prefabricated construction can offer quick build times and a high-quality, efficient house – but where do your goals sit on the scale of off-site manufacture? Sander Tel investigates the ins and outs of this route to a new home

This stunning Baufritz home features a mix of timber cladding and render on the exterior

Creating a brand-new bespoke home that ticks all your boxes is never a small feat, even for the most experienced self builders. Prefabricated, or prefab construction, is traditionally associated with boxy post-war buildings that offered affordable housing for the masses. These days it’s very different, as the prefab route allows for a huge scope of design choices, outstanding efficiency benefits and cost certainty.

In modern construction, combining an intricatelydesigned scheme with an off-site manufactured structure is a sure-fire way to realise your dream home on time and on a pre-agreed budget. Here, I’m taking a look at the different levels of prefabrication for self builds and what these could mean for your specific project.

What is prefabricated construction?

Prefab is a term commonly used throughout the self build industry – it refers to elements of a project that are constructed off-site, often highly-finished walling created in a quality-controlled factory, which are then brought to site for assembly. There tends to be confusion between prefabricated and off-site construction, however, as they’re frequently interchanged.