It is darkup there.
Every loft starts as the worst room in the house. Ours end as the one nobody wants to leave. The real cost, the real timeline, and what happens if it goes wrong — all published, before you give us your phone number.
- Dormer conversion, typical
- £50,000
- On site
- 8–12 weeks
- Fixed after survey
- In writing
Do you need planning permission?
- Under 40m³ added volume (terraced) or 50m³ (semi/detached) — usually permitted development
- Roof height stays below the highest point of the existing roof
- Article 4 areas (certain conservation areas and town centres) remove permitted development rights — we check this in week one
Will it even work up there?
Measure floor to ridge with a tape, from the top of the ceiling joist to the underside of the ridge board. Put it in below — this is the first thing any surveyor does, and you can do it yourself in four minutes.
There is no legal minimum ceiling height for a habitable room in England — the 2.2m figure everyone quotes is a rule of thumb, not a regulation. What is regulated is headroom over the stairs: 2m normally, relaxed to 1.9m centre / 1.8m edge for a loft conversion.
You would finish with about
2350–2400mm
- Insulation & lining
- −100–200mm
- The room you stand in
- 2350–2400mm
- New floor structure
- −100–150mm
This works
A standard conversion finishes comfortably.
Reviews, unfiltered.
Pulled live from Google. We do not screen them by rating — hiding a bad one is against the law here, and you would not believe us anyway.
"Finished nine days early and the price on the contract was the price we paid. Building Control passed first time."
"They dealt with the party wall notices and building control directly — we never had to chase either. Exact quote we were given."
"Hip-to-gable on a tricky roof — they were upfront about the steel sizing cost before it became a change order."
Sample content. On a live site these pull from the Google Places API — a maximum of five, unfiltered by rating, each linking to the original review on Google Maps.
- 01
No subcontractors
The same four people from scaffold to sign-off — no rotating crew, no chasing subbies over whose fault a delay was.
- 02
A fixed price, and what's not in it
Every quote comes with a scope schedule: included, excluded, and the rate any variation is priced at before it happens.
- 03
Paperwork you've never heard of, handled
Party wall notices, building control, structural calculations, the lawful development certificate you'll need when you sell.
- 04
Staged payments, money held back
Deposit capped at 15%. Five per cent held back until building control issues the completion certificate — not before.
Things the rest of the trade will not put in writing.
We looked hard at how other loft conversion firms present their pricing before building this one. These are the questions most of them left unanswered.
- 01
A £50,000 quote is a £60,000 project.
Design fees, structural calculations, planning and building control fees, party wall surveyors and a sane contingency add 20–30% to any headline build cost. We put the whole number in front of you at survey rather than discovering it together in week seven.
- 02
You will hate weeks five and six.
First fix is the ugliest part of any build — walls opened up, dust everywhere, and nothing visibly finished. It's normal, and it's temporary.
- 03
Sometimes the answer is that you should not do it.
If your ridge height doesn't clear a workable headroom or planning genuinely won't allow it, we'll tell you at survey — not after you've paid a deposit.
- 04
Most homeowners can't tell a good builder from a good sales pitch.
There is no licence required to call yourself a builder in England — anyone can. That is why we lead with a 15% deposit cap and a written contract, not a sales pitch: check our accreditations before you check our prices.
- 05
A loft without building control sign-off isn't a bedroom.
Not to a mortgage lender, anyway. Skip that step to save money now and it can stall or kill your sale years later — we register every job with building control from day one so it's never a problem you inherit.
Currently on site.
Four people, one job at a time.
Northlight exists because of a survey that went badly for someone else — three quotes that couldn't be compared to one another. We took the lottery out of who shows up by not subcontracting, and cap how much work we take on in a year as a result.
- SA
Sam Achebe
Founder and surveyorDoes every survey personally. Eleven years on commercial sites before this, which is where the obsession with programme and paperwork comes from.
- MK
Marek Kowalczyk
Site leadOn your job every day from scaffold to sign-off. Carpenter by trade, thirty years of roofs.
- ED
Erin Dalgleish
Project coordinatorBuilding control, party wall notices, the planning portal, and the Friday note you get whether or not there is news.
- CR
Callum Reid
Second fix and finishesJoinery, tiling, and the last five per cent that most firms leave hanging.
Illustrative team profiles showing the level of detail a real one gets — to be replaced with the actual people once the studio is staffed.
Checkable, and dated.
Federation of Master Builders
Independently inspected member. Ask us for the inspection date.
TrustMark registered
The only government-endorsed standards scheme for work in and around the home.
£10m public liability
Plus employer's liability, professional indemnity on design work, and contractors' all-risk on the works themselves.
Insurance-backed guarantee
Ten years, issued in your name by the insurer — if we ever stopped trading, you would still be covered.
Chartered structural engineer
Every scheme calculated and signed. We do not build off a builder's rule of thumb.
A survey is ninety minutes and costs nothing.
You will get a feasibility answer on the day, and a written scope schedule within a week — the one that lists what is not included, so you can finally compare three quotes.