Maisy Dawson
Following on from our recent blog examining your insulation options for Loft Conversions, we thought it may be useful to examine some of the options for bringing light and ventilation into your proposed loft conversion, along with maximising any views and giving your rooms some desirable design features. The first is how to get a staircase up to the new loft rooms from the floor below whilst trying to a) make it look as original to the house as possible, b) maintain the minimum headroom or more as you rise up with the stairs in order to meet building regulations, c) ensure you have a landing area at the top of the stairs of sufficient size and headroom to meet buidng regulations, d) ensure that the finished loft space (after insulation and structure etc) is of a useful size and shape, and e) examine whether you have enough width and height in the finished roof space to have a functional, useable room, or perhaps you may need to consider one or more dormer windows to the roof slope to help with useable roof space? When considering options for using either roof windows or dormers, headroom is of course a factor and often there will be a combination of both used in a typical conversion.
Any roof window which lies flat into the slope of the roof and which folds away when closed (including the Velux "Cabrio" fold-away balcony window) doesn't normally require planning consent unless you're in a conservation area or the building is a listed one, but always check with your local authority.
