Most attic conversions are driven by a desire for a new bedroom, a children’s den or a home office. But before you get carried away with the prospect of all that new space, remember, safety first.
“It’s something that has to be considered very seriously,” says architect Georgina Hutton from Nuhaus.
“There are huge rules when it comes to attics, so the best thing for the homeowner to do is get some kind of professional advice, either from an architect or an engineer, because, all of a sudden, you are expecting your two-storey house to act as a three-storey house,” she explains.
When your house was originally built, its attic was likely not designed to be a habitable space. “The original ceiling joists would have been sized for light storage, not live loads,” says Hutton.
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Far from simply laying a floor and punching in a roof light or two, there are building regulations to be adhered to, covering everything from structural specifications to insulation, ventilation, and – most importantly – fire safety.
In 2022 the Department of Housing published loft conversion guidelines, Protect Your Family – Fire Safety Guidance, available on its website, to help ensure the public has a greater understanding of the risks involved in attic conversions, which proliferated during Covid, she says.
All habitable rooms in the new storey should be provided with a window or roof light that is suitable for escape or rescue, for example.
There are also special provisions in relation to enclosing the stairs to the new storey and upgrading the protection to the existing stairway. Both the existing and the new stairs should be enclosed in 30-minute fire resisting wall construction.
If the converted space doesn’t comply with building regulations it is not deemed habitable space. “That means that if it was a three-bedroomed house, it cannot be sold as a four-bedroomed house, and people sometimes lose sight of that, which has to do with poor advice,” says Hutton.
Do it right, however, and it’s an opportunity to create what can be the most spectacular space in the home, typically with the best views, she says.
Insulation is key. In a typical attic, the living space is like a box in a triangle.
“The roof space itself outside of the new room or living space is still cold and ventilated in winter, so you want to insulate the walls and ceiling of the living space to retain the heat in there,” says Brian McIntyre from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), which administers government grants for insulation.
“Those rooms can also be a bit leaky because they’re made from wall and ceiling panels that all have joints between adjacent panels and they need to be butted together tightly and done properly so they don’t allow a gap for draughts to come in or heat to slip out.”
Internally, clever design can go a long way in attics. Susan McGowan, of interior architecture and design studio Ashen & Cloud, suggests that building single bed nooks under the eaves where the roof is too low to stand can be a very effective use of the space, providing guest accommodation that doesn’t eat into what might otherwise be a children’s den or home office.
When it comes to painting, keep to one colour.
“If you are going to drench the room, whether it’s a dark or a light colour, don’t differentiate the ceiling as it can sometimes feel a bit odd. Because the ceiling comes down quite far, you’ll end up with three quarters of the room in one colour and the rest in another, so it’s better to stick to all the one,” she says.
Similarly, if you are putting in dormer windows, hang the curtains from the ceiling in such a way that they wrap around the space in a u-shape. “It looks better and means that when open, they don’t take light from the room, which will do if stacked on the facing walls,” she says.
Ventilation is vital too. “Heat is a big thing in attics, especially the way things are now. If you are planning to make it an office, you need to make sure you have adequate ventilation in summer because those spaces can get really hot,” she says.
Smart Storage, best known for its understairs storage units, offers a range of bespoke storage solutions for attics too. It can provide both ideas and an estimated quote based on pictures from your phone.
“When you’re converting the attic space you generally end up with these little stubby eave walls along the edge,” says founder Paul Jacob.
“It’s about trying to get storage in spaces that are not high enough for anything else. It’s also about maximising the amount of room in the attic space. The last thing you want is to build out units into the space that you have.”
His units are built back into the eaves. “They go back into that hidden space behind and slide out to give you storage space. All of the units are built into their own boxes under the attic, so when they slide back in. They are not just in open space where spiders or dust can get in,” he says.
The company also designs built-in wardrobes for the gable ends of attics, which typically provide the only spaces where you can hang long garments.
He recommends keeping colour schemes as light as possible, including for built-in features. “With attics you’re always trying to create that feeling of a bigger space,” says Jacob. “It’s all about getting the colour scheme right so that the ceiling doesn’t feel like it’s closing in on you, and light colours will work for that.”
