Loft conversion as permanent bedroom?

[MovingHouse2023]

Found a lovely 3 bed 1930s semi which is in budget with some money left over. 2 x bigger bedrooms and 1 x box room. Have 2 little DC and a DMIL who would like to stay quite regularly as she will be 1.5h away from new house. Her mobility is on the slide so we will probably make the 3rd ‘box room’ hers as it’s right by the bathroom, away from the stairs and she can leave her stuff in it. At the moment 2 x DC can share. We are thinking about longer term options for a 4th bedroom. We are aiming to extend after saving again, but I’m interested how have people found loft conversations as a permanent solution for an extra bedroom? Do they get stiflingly hot and stuffy or have things progressed since I was a kid? Are they a pain to have fitted? Thanks!

Loft conversions are great. You get proper insulation so that it is warm in winter and cool in summer. Install decent windows and proper stairs.

However they are not cheap.

Had one as my bedroom a few years ago. Absolute heat trap. No idea if it was the building itself, ceiling height, or what.

Am sure some more experienced folks can say with more certainty. Pics 10 onwards are loft level.

11 was my bedroom with the bathroom at the end of it. What you can't see is another small skylight where the photographer was standing.

Skylight windows are a menace to clean and birds were always shitting on them, esp the one adjacent to the roof terrace (I am not calling it that, the EA did).

I found this property on the Rightmove Android app and wanted you to see it: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/112775321

We had our loft converted into 2 bedrooms last summer. We also has air con put in. The loft is great in winter as stays lovely and warm with minimal heating but it's already getting too warm up there now and we've barely had any sun where I am so far.

I have a loft conversion with ensuite, love it apart from a few weeks a year when it is too hot. This is despite tons of insulation as I remember the builder complaining about how deep it was due to building regs. It never gets very cold though I had to turn the radiator permanently off in it. The velux windows swivel completely so you can clean them ifyou feel the need🙃

Following as we are in an identical situation to you Op - including the 2 x DD and miL and wanting the loft

I think we will go ahead

Our loft gets extremely hot in the summer and very cold in the winter despite lots of insulation I'm afraid.

Having the work done was fairly straightforward. They made a hole in the roof so everything was done from outside via scaffolding and then when the basic structure complete they finally knocked through into the house to put the stairs in. It really wasn't too disruptive tbh. The worst bit was connecting the plumbing and electrics to the rest of the house which required lifting the carpets and floorboards on the middle floor.

I am working in my office in a loft conversion which was completed just under 2 years ago. It is warm. Even on very cold days it takes very little heat to warm it up. I guess heat rises so heat from downstairs ends up there too. BR do require a lot of insulation so you really tell the difference when I go into the eaves storage the difference in temperature.

It gets very warm in the summer months. We have a back window and the front has the velux windows. See that these two windows face each other so that you can get a cross breeze which can cool the space very quickly. We will consider aircon in the future if required.

We are in a bungalow so most of the downstairs stays cooler on the very hot days and thankfully we have bedrooms there too but both kids and I were able to sleep there during the heat wave last year.

And one final thing, you can get velux windows with shutters on the outside so the effects of the heat on the glass can be removed even before the sun touches the windows. We don't have these but I really would have considered them if I had known about them.

I absolutely love ours.

Insulation is important to keep a loft warm in winter, but in summer it won't really keep the heat out. The loft gets hot if the rest of the house is hot - the hot air rises. You need cross ventilation, so veluxes on both sides or a dormer + velux. Go for centre pivot veluxes so they can be cleaned from inside. Avoid massive south facing windows. If you want a dormer with doors and Juliet balcony, make sure there is a separate window in the room so you can vent it at night without needing to leave the doors open.

My loft is a permanent very large bedroom. It never gets very cold in winter (it has a ton of insulation) but it does get quite warm in summer so sometimes I move downstairs!

It's a fantastic space but it took about 4 months to do and cost a fortune and this was before Brexit. The amount of disruption whilst they lower ceilings etc is huge, plus we had to replace all internal doors with fire-safe doors and stick smoke detectors everywhere.

We did check with an estate agent to make sure it would be worth it with regards to the value of the house and it was so we cracked on. I've just sold the house and all viewers loved the loft (it has an ensuite too and lots of storage).

We had a full loft conversion last year which is one bedroom, a study or dressing room and an en-suite. It was meant to be the master suite and looks really lovely, albeit with a lower ceiling height than the rest of the house.

It cost a lot of money and has undoubtedly added a lot more to the value of the house but we gave it to our teenage DD after a couple of months. It did get very warm but that wasn't a problem. It was the noise that got to me - we had the maximum sound proofing possible but it was still so loud we might as well have been sleeping outside. Every bird that walked across the roof sounded as loud as a large dog. I found it impossible to sleep up there. Also the shower wasn't as powerful as the downstairs shower so wasn't as nice as I'd hoped.

I'm glad we did it for house value purposes, and also we got rid of a lot of the crap from the house as it obviously decimated our storage space.

We have a 1930s semi and are having our loft done at the moment. Looking forward to a little child-free sanctuary in the loft :)

Oh god, I forgot the bird noise. They loved our roof because there were five chimneys to perch on. They never shut up.

Also, we had a wasps nest infestation right above my bed. The lava make a snap, crackle and pop noise for two months. That was fun. Rice crispie noise 24/7.

We had ours done 12 years ago - two double bedrooms and a shower room. It gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, although we've rectified that by installing better radiators. Totally worth it, and as a PP said, the disruption really is minimal.

Just to say - top hung Velux can be cleaned from the inside - they have a special pivot you can activate to turn them completely around for cleaning.

Also helpful is an opening skylight, as it allows stack effect cooling throughout the house.