With their pitched roofs and often awkward footprints, attic spaces are always going to require a little ingenuity if you want to make the most of them. Usually attics are used for bedrooms and bathrooms, so they pose some familiar problems: do you squeeze something low under the eaves, like a bed or a bath, or do you build into the space and try and create deceptive storage and clever showers? We've gathered a few ideas from our archive that demonstrate perennially stylish and well thought out answers to these questions: all you have to do is copy them.
The box bed
Both practical and charming, box beds are an excellent and widely used solution for the problem of what to put under the eaves. The key is to give them some kind of separation from the rest of the space, which makes them feel more deliberate than simply a bed jammed into a corner. Give the bed structure by constructing a box around it or adding curtains to close it off from the rest of the space. Inside the bed nook, a lamp mounted on the wall, bookshelves and a patterned headboard all help to make the space feel deeply appealing and cosy: the perfect little hideaway.
The clever storage
If you want efficient storage in an attic, you'll almost certainly have to look to bespoke joinery to make the most of space under a pitched roof. You can either build out an entire wall, as Salvesen Graham and Spencer & Wedekind have done in the attic below, or make something that looks more like a freestanding piece of furniture, as Laura Stephens has done in a cottage, where a little light quirkiness never goes amiss.
We particularly like the combination of shelves and wardrobes in the child's bedroom by Spencer & Wedekind, which uses the diagonal space in a particularly charming way.
The attic bathroom
There is pretty much only one sensible way to design an attic bathroom, and it has been repeated in various configurations many times in our archive. The bath needs to fit under the eaves, and ideally be boxed in so that a shelf runs all the way around it. The shower can then take its place at the taller end of the pitched roof. If the room has a reasonable amount of width to it, we love the idea of putting them next to each other, as Todhunter Earle has done in the bottom image. Of course, if space is limited, you can forgo a shower altogether. In the Arts & Crafts-style cottage pictured below, an abundance of natural materials – in the sisal carpet and the wicker lighting – stand out against airy, white walls.
The secret to making tricky spaces – such as attic bathrooms – feel comfortable and homey is in the layers you apply. Just look at the above image of lighting designer Alice Palmer's London house. Marble makes up a smart base, to which she has added splatterware tiles and a pretty green paint. Similarly, Jo Bibby has used painted wooden panelling to add intrigue to her attic bathroom.
