Loft conversions in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire & Buckinghamshire
The space is already there. A loft conversion turns it into a bedroom, a bathroom, an office or a room for a teenager who wants a door of their own — without losing a square inch of garden. How big a job that is depends almost entirely on what your roof is made of and how much height is sitting under it.
There are really only three kinds of loft conversion
Which one you need is decided by the roof you already have, not by the one you’d prefer. Knowing which of the three you’re looking at is most of the answer to “what will this involve?”
Rooflight conversion
The roof stays exactly as it is and windows go into the existing slope. Least disruptive, least structural work — but it only works if the loft already has enough usable head height across enough of its width, and plenty don’t.
Dormer
A box is built out from the roof slope to create full-height floor area and, just as importantly, somewhere for the top of a staircase to arrive. This is the usual answer for a loft that is almost big enough, and it is the most common loft conversion on ordinary houses.
Taking the roof off
Where the existing roof simply can’t give you the room — too shallow a pitch, too little height, a structure that fights you at every turn — the roof comes off and is rebuilt around the new floor. It is the largest version of the job, the house has to be properly protected while it is open, and it is the one that gives you a genuine extra storey rather than a converted attic. We do our own roofing, so this doesn’t mean handing your house to a second firm halfway through.
What decides whether a loft works
These are the things we look at on the first visit, and the things that turn a loft from “maybe” into a plan.
- Head height. Not the height at the ridge — the height across the part of the floor you actually want to stand and walk in, once a new floor and insulation have eaten into it from below and above.
- What the roof is built from. A modern trussed roof has a web of timber running straight through the middle of the space, and it is holding the roof up, so it can’t simply be cut away. Replacing that support with a new structural floor and beams is routine work, but it is work. An older cut-and-purlin roof usually starts with more open space in it.
- The floor. The ceiling joists above your bedrooms were sized to hold up a ceiling, not to carry a bed, a wardrobe and the people using them. A conversion almost always means new joists, often carried on steel.
- Where the staircase goes. Building regulations expect a proper fixed staircase, not a loft ladder, and finding somewhere for it to land is usually the hardest part of the design. It costs you space on the floor below, and where that space comes from often shapes the whole layout.
- Fire safety and escape. Adding a floor changes how everyone gets out of the house. That normally means work below the loft as well as in it — the stairwell, doors and alarms — which catches people out when they were expecting the job to stay upstairs.
- Water and heat. A loft bathroom needs drainage run down through the house and enough pressure at the top of it, and the new rooms need to be on the heating system properly rather than as an afterthought.
How the work actually runs
- Survey and feasibilityWe come out, measure the head height, look at how the roof is built and work out where a staircase can land. That visit is what turns a maybe into a plan.
- Design and drawingsWe draw it up in-house and develop it with you, then produce the drawings planning and building control need. Structural calculations are coordinated as part of it.
- PermissionsWe tell you which route your address needs and handle the application ourselves. You are not sent off to find an architect and come back when you have one.
- Written quote and programmeYou get a clear written quote and a programme for the work before anything starts, so you know what is happening and roughly when.
- Opening upScaffold goes up, then the roof is opened, the dormer formed or the roof structure rebuilt, the new floor put in with whatever steel it needs, and the whole thing made weathertight again.
- Staircase and first fixThe stairs go in, and the new rooms get their heating, plumbing and electrics — our own trades, on one schedule, so nobody is stood waiting on anybody else.
- Insulate, plaster, finishInsulation, plasterboard and skim, second fix, then decorating and making good. Building control sign-off is coordinated alongside it, and we snag the job properly before handing it over.
While it is running you can follow it in our app: progress photos as the work happens, quotes and invoices to look over, and messages straight to the team — so you are not ringing up to ask what stage it is at.
What drives the cost
There is no honest single figure for a loft conversion, and anyone who gives you one down the phone is guessing. These are what genuinely move it:
- Which of the three routes your roof needs — a rooflight conversion and a full roof rebuild are different jobs, not different sizes of the same job.
- What is already up there: head height, the roof structure, and whether the new floor needs joists, steel, or both.
- Where the staircase goes, and how much work that means on the floor below.
- How many rooms you are making, and whether one of them is a bathroom — drainage and plumbing run up through the house is a real part of the job.
- The finish you choose, from the rooflights down to the ironmongery.
- Access — how easily scaffold goes up, materials come in and waste goes out.
We don’t publish a price list, because a number given without seeing your roof would be misleading. Every quote is free and no-obligation: tell us about the loft and we’ll come and look at it properly.
How long it takes
It depends which of the three routes your loft needs, how long planning or building control approval takes, and the weather — an open roof wants dry spells, and no builder controls those. We’ll give you a realistic timeline as part of your quote rather than a hopeful one, and once work starts the app shows you where it has actually got to.
Planning permission and building control
Many loft conversions fall under permitted development, which means no planning application at all. Plenty don’t: a conservation area, a listed building, a flat, or a house that has already been extended are the usual reasons, and a dormer on the front of a house is treated differently from one at the back.
Whichever route applies, a loft conversion always has to satisfy building regulations. That covers the strength of the new floor, the staircase, insulation, and fire safety and escape — the parts that make the difference between a room and a room you are allowed to sleep in.
We handle the drawings, the permitted-development advice and the planning application in-house, and we coordinate building control sign-off alongside the build as your single point of contact. If your house is joined to a neighbour’s there can be party-wall formalities to settle first as well. We’ll tell you exactly what your address needs before any work begins.
What we handle ourselves
One firm, one point of contact, one schedule. Ken Harrison started the business over fifty years ago and his son Michael runs it now — the same family from the first visit to the last coat of paint.
- Drawings, design and the planning application
- The new floor structure, structural openings and steelwork
- Roofing — dormers, rebuilt roof structure, tiling and rooflights
- Windows, doors and the staircase
- Heating, plumbing and electrics through the new rooms
- Plastering, decorating and making good on the floors below
A loft conversion we have done
On a house in Tring the loft could not be converted as it stood, so the whole roof came off. Structural steels were threaded through the original brickwork to carry a new attic floor, rooms were built out in the space above, a staircase was put in to reach them, and an entirely new roof went back on over the top. An open porch was built on the same job.
Read the Tring loft conversion case study — ten photographs from site, from the first steel going in to standing inside the new room. If your loft is in that part of the world, there is more about working in the town — including which streets lose their permitted development rights — on our builders in Tring page.
Where we work
Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. If you aren’t sure whether your address is inside that, the postcode checker on the homepage will tell you in a second — and if you are just outside it, ask anyway. We take on the right jobs a bit further afield.