The Physics Department of the Technical University of Munich operates a shallow underground detector laboratory in Garching, Germany. It provides $$\sim 160\,{\mathrm{m}^2}$$ ∼160m2 of laboratory space which is shielded from cosmic radiation by $$\sim 6\,\mathrm{m}$$ ∼6m of gravel and soil, corresponding to a shielding of $$\sim 15\,{\mathrm{m.w.e.}}$$ ∼15m.w.e. . The laboratory also houses a cleanroom equipped with work- and wetbenches, a chemical fumehood as well as a spin-coater and a mask-aligner for photolithographic processing of semiconductor detectors. Furthermore, the shallow underground laboratory runs two high-purity germanium detector screening stations, a liquid argon cryostat and a $$^3$$ 3 He–$$^4$$ 4 He dilution refrigerator with a base temperature of $$\le 12-14\,\mathrm{mK}$$ ≤12-14mK . The infrastructure provided by the shallow laboratory is particularly relevant for the characterization of $$\hbox {CaWO}_4$$ CaWO4 target crystals for the CRESST-III experiment, detector fabrication and assembly for rare event searches. Future applications of the laboratory include detector development in the framework of coherent neutrino nucleus scattering experiments ($$\nu $$ ν -cleus) and studying its potential as a site to search for MeV-scale dark matter with gram-scale cryogenic detectors.