Sunroom vs. Screenroom: Which Fits Your Lifestyle?

A screenroom and a four-season sunroom solve two different problems, not two tiers of the same product. The screenroom is an open-air addition with insect protection, available in all five Midtown markets. The sunroom is a fully enclosed, climate-controlled room usable in every season. The right choice comes down to how you want to live in the space.

What Is a Screenroom?

A screenroom is an open-air structure enclosed by insect-blocking screens instead of solid walls, built to give you outdoor living without the outdoor bugs. It's designed for seasonal use, meaning the months your climate supports comfortable time outside, and it's available across all five Midtown markets: St. Louis, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, and Kansas City.

How an Open-Air Screenroom Is Built

Midtown's screenrooms are computer-designed and constructed with heavy-gauge aluminum framing paired with designer screen doors, built to the same premium installation standard applied across every Midtown product line and completed by Midtown-certified crews. The screen mesh creates a sealed barrier against flying insects while leaving airflow and sightlines to the yard essentially unobstructed, which is the entire point of choosing an open-air structure over a solid-walled one.

What Insect-Free Outdoor Living Actually Gives You

The value of that sealed screen barrier is easier to appreciate once you look at the scale of the insect problem it solves. There are over 3,700 species of mosquito worldwide, and at least 176 species found in the United States alone (American Mosquito Control Association, Fun Facts). A Midtown screenroom doesn't reduce that population, but it does take it out of the equation entirely for the hours you spend in the space, without trading away the breeze, the natural light, or the connection to your backyard that a solid-walled addition would. For homeowners in humid, mosquito-heavy climates like Atlanta or Nashville, that airflow-without-insects tradeoff is often the single biggest reason a screenroom gets chosen over a fully enclosed structure.

What Is a Four-Season Sunroom?

A four-season sunroom is a fully enclosed, insulated glass room engineered for year-round, climate-controlled use, currently offered by Midtown in the St. Louis market only. Where a screenroom is built for open-air, seasonal comfort, a sunroom functions as genuine, conditioned living space in every season, including the cold-weather months an open-air structure isn't built for.

How a Fully Enclosed, Insulated Glass Room Works

A sunroom is computer-designed like every Midtown addition, but the structure itself is different from a screenroom by design: insulated glass and a fully enclosed shell replace the screen mesh, and the space is built to hold conditioned air rather than let it pass through. That's what makes it usable as an extension of the home's living space rather than a warm-weather-only room, and it's built to the same premium Midtown installation standard and completed by the same Midtown-certified crews as every other product line we offer.

What Year-Round Enclosed Living Gives You

An enclosed, glass-walled room does something a solid-walled addition can't: it keeps you connected to natural daylight in every season, not just the months you'd otherwise spend outside. That matters more than it might seem. In a study comparing day-shift office workers with and without workplace windows, those with windows received 173 percent more white-light exposure during work hours, and slept an average of 46 minutes more per night, than workers without windows (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, reporting Boubekri et al., Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2014). That research measured general daylight exposure in an office setting, not a Midtown sunroom specifically, but it's a useful proxy for why a glass-enclosed, climate-controlled room built as a home office, reading room, or flex space tends to get used every day of the year rather than sitting empty once the weather turns. St. Louis homeowners exploring a four-season sunroom addition are choosing exactly that: a room built to stay in daily rotation through a full Midwest winter, not just a Midwest summer.

Where Are These Available? Screenroom vs. Sunroom by Market

Midtown's screenroom is available in every market we serve, while the four-season sunroom is currently offered in St. Louis only. That scope matters enough to state plainly before you go any further in comparing the two, since it narrows the decision differently depending on where you live.

• St. Louis, MO: Both the screenroom and the four-season sunroom are available, which pairs naturally with the region's full seasonal swing, a screenroom for open-air spring, summer, and fall use, a sunroom for enclosed, conditioned use through the winter.
• Chicago, IL: Screenroom only. Chicago's longer, colder winter window makes the open-air, insect-free screenroom the clear fit for the warmer months when it gets the heaviest use.
• Nashville, TN: Screenroom only. A shorter, milder winter than Chicago or St. Louis gives Nashville homeowners a wider comfortable-weather window to use a screenroom across more of the year.
• Atlanta, GA: Screenroom only. Hot, humid summers and heavy mosquito pressure make the insect-free, airflow-forward screenroom especially relevant here.
• Kansas City, MO/KS: Screenroom only. Kansas City shares St. Louis's continental climate, but the sunroom is not yet part of Midtown's Kansas City lineup.

If you're outside St. Louis, the screenroom is the addition to explore. If you're in St. Louis, both are genuinely on the table, and the decision comes down to how you want to use the space, which is exactly what the next section walks through.

How Do You Choose Between a Screenroom and a Sunroom?

The choice isn't about which structure is better built, both are computer-designed and installed to the same Midtown standard, it's about which use case matches how you actually want to spend time in the space. A screenroom is the right call for open-air, seasonal entertaining. A sunroom is the right call for year-round, enclosed living space.

Signs a Screenroom Fits How You Live

A screenroom is likely your fit if you picture the space as an extension of your yard rather than an extension of your climate-controlled living room. Homeowners who entertain outdoors through spring, summer, and fall, who want unobstructed views and real airflow rather than a sealed room, and who want insect-free comfort without committing to a fully enclosed structure tend to get the most daily value out of a screenroom. It's also the only one of the two products available if you're in Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, or Kansas City.

Signs a Sunroom Fits How You Live

A sunroom is likely your fit if you need the space to function every month of the year, not just the warm ones. Homeowners looking for a home office, a year-round flex room, or a space that stays comfortable through a cold St. Louis winter tend to lean toward the sunroom. Because this option is currently St. Louis-only, it's a consideration specifically for homeowners in that market.

Both additions score a full 10 out of 10 on what they're specifically designed to do, the difference is which lifestyle each one is built for, not which one performs better.

What Do Both Additions Have in Common?

Beyond the screenroom-versus-sunroom decision, both Midtown additions belong to the same category of investment: purpose-built outdoor living space that homeowners rate among their most satisfying home improvements. A new patio carries a Joy Score of 9.9 out of 10, and all 11 outdoor projects measured scored 9 or above, among the highest satisfaction ratings of any home improvement category (National Association of Realtors and National Association of Landscape Professionals, 2023 Remodeling Impact Report: Outdoor Features).

That data covers patios and decks specifically, not a Midtown screenroom or sunroom directly, but it reflects the same category of outdoor-living investment both products belong to.

Resale value tells a similar story. A wood deck addition recoups 94.9 percent of its cost at resale nationally, and a composite deck recoups 88.5 percent, with eight of the ten highest-ROI projects in the report belonging to exterior and outdoor categories (Zonda, 2025 Cost vs. Value Report). Again, that's deck-specific data reflecting the outdoor-living category broadly, not a measured figure for a Midtown screenroom or sunroom, but it's consistent with why 55 percent of residential architecture firms report rising demand for outdoor living spaces as the top exterior feature category in the industry (American Institute of Architects, 2025 Home Design Trends Survey, via Qualified Remodeler).

Whichever addition fits your home, both the Midtown screenroom and Midtown sunroom are computer-designed and completed by Midtown-certified crews to the same premium standard. And if a deck is part of your outdoor living plan alongside a screenroom or sunroom, our guide to low-maintenance decking materials covers how to choose a surface that holds up as long as the room next to it.

Ready to Explore Outdoor Living With Midtown?

If you're anywhere in Midtown's five markets, an open-air screenroom addition starts with a free in-home assessment from a licensed, insured Midtown project manager who evaluates your space and walks you through a detailed, itemized written estimate before anything is finalized.

If you're in St. Louis and want year-round, enclosed living space instead, or in addition, St. Louis homeowners can schedule that same assessment for a four-season sunroom, currently available exclusively in the St. Louis market.

Midtown Home Improvements is a veteran-owned, family-owned company founded in 1990 that has completed more than 50,000 projects across St. Louis, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, and Kansas City. Financing options are available, ask your project manager for details. Call 1-888-725-0170 or request your free outdoor living estimate to get started.