Cottage loft ideas for the bedroom with no door

By four o'clock on an August afternoon the loft is the warmest room in the cottage. Everything the day has made comes up the stair: the heat off the kitchen, the smell of the toast, the radio, and later the card game, the lamplight and the laughing. It is the one bedroom with no door, and that is the whole problem of furnishing it. This page is about the bed under the slope, what can and cannot come up the stair, the heat, the light and the noise, and who should be sleeping up there.

What a cottage loft is, and why it has no door

A cottage loft is the open sleeping floor under the roof of a lake cottage, reached by a steep stair or a ladder, with a sloped ceiling, a knee wall and no door. One edge looks down into the room below, so the loft shares that room's heat, light and sound all evening. Furnishing it means planning for all three.

The word does a few jobs, so it is worth saying which one this is. A loft bed is a single bed raised on legs over a desk, and it is something you put in a room, not a room. In an English house the loft is the attic, where the suitcases and the Christmas boxes live, and a loft conversion turns it into a bedroom with a proper stair and a door. At the lake, whether you call the place a cottage, a cabin or camp, the loft is the half floor up under the rafters where the cousins sleep. Some places have a second one over the boathouse. This page is about the one in the cottage.

Where the bed goes under the slope

Put the bed along the knee wall, the low wall where the roof comes down, with its long side against that wall and its open side toward the middle of the loft, where the roof is highest. That way everybody gets in and out of bed standing up, and nobody sits up in the night into a rafter.

Before you decide, lie down and sit up in the spot where the bed will go. Do it once with the head at one end and once with the head at the other, because one of them nearly always gives you more room over the pillow. Keep the floor down the middle of the loft clear, under the ridge, since that strip is the only place an adult can stand up straight, and it is also the way to the stair in the dark.

A raised loft bed is the one bed a sloped loft cannot take, because it lifts the sleeper up into the lowest part of the room. Mattresses go on low frames, or on the boards on a thick rug, which is how most cottage lofts have always been done and which nobody under twelve has ever minded.

What comes up the stair, and what never will

Measure the stair before you buy anything for the loft. A mattress bends and can be carried up a steep stair, but a box spring cannot, and neither can most dressers. Choose things that fold, bend or come apart, and plan on a blanket box at the stair head instead of a chest of drawers.

That one fact settles most of the furniture. A wooden slatted frame that comes apart in pieces goes up easily; a folding canvas camp cot goes up under one arm and makes the extra bed for the weekend everybody comes. Clothes live on a row of pegs along the knee wall or in a shallow shelf at its foot, because a loft wardrobe would have to fit under the slope, and the slope always wins.

The blanket box earns its place twice. It holds the spare bedding all summer, and it gives anybody who comes up the stair something to sit on while they talk to whoever is in bed. Put it at the top of the stair, a little back from the edge, where it also tells a sleepy child that the floor ends here.

The August heat, and a window at each end

A loft is hot because warm air rises, and all afternoon the rest of the cottage sends its heat up the stair. The fix is moving air. Open the window at each end and leave both open day and night, and after dark set a fan in one, blowing out, to draw cooler air up the stair.

This is the opposite of the bunkie across the grass, where the cold comes off the water even in August and the wool is what matters. Up in the loft, until the last week of August, sleep under cotton. A cotton waffle blanket is light enough to sleep under on a close night and warm enough when the wind changes, and it washes and dries on the line in an afternoon.

Keep the wool folded in the blanket box all the same. Some night in late August the wind goes round to the north, the loft is suddenly the coolest place in the house instead of the warmest, and nobody wants to go downstairs to look for a blanket.

Light and sound come up the open edge

With no door, the loft gets the lamplight and the noise from below until the last person goes to bed. Hang a curtain along the rail or across the stair head to soften the light, give each bed its own small lamp, and put a rug down so footsteps do not carry through the boards.

A plain linen or cotton panel on a tension rod or a length of wire is enough. It will not keep out sound, but it turns the glare of the room below into a glow, and it gives a child going to bed at eight the feeling of a room with a wall. A clamp lamp fixed to the bed frame or a shelf, a brass clamp lamp if you can find an old one, lets a reader keep reading after the others are asleep without lighting up the whole roof.

The rug matters as much for the people underneath as for the people up top. Bare boards carry every step into the room below, and a thick wool or braided rug between the beds takes most of it out. If there is a spot for one small picture, the wall at the head of the stair is it, the first thing anybody sees on the way up. A print of the lake you are on suits it, and there are a few in our shop.

Who sleeps up there, and who gets the bunkie instead

The loft suits anyone who can take the stair in the dark without thinking about it: children old enough for the stair, the cousins, a teenager who likes a room with no door because nobody can knock on it. Light sleepers, early risers and anybody who would rather not climb at night belong in the bunkie or the guest room.

Think of it as sorting the sleepers, not the rooms. Whoever goes to bed first and wakes up last is the person the loft is kind to, because they sleep through the card game and wake to an empty cottage. Whoever goes to bed last is the person the loft is hardest on, because everyone below them is still awake. Children who are still in their own room at home may want some of the same things up here; the cottage kids' room has the list. A grandparent visiting for the long weekend, or a friend who has never stayed with you before, will sleep better in a guest room with a door.

Go up at nine o'clock before anybody else does

The best way to find out what the loft needs is to go up at nine on a summer night, with the lamps on and everybody still talking below, and lie on each bed for five minutes. What you notice is the list: the light in your eyes, the step that creaks, the window that will not stay open.

Do it once in August and once on the cool weekend in September, and fix what you find before the next crowd comes up the road. Most of it costs nothing: turn a bed, move a lamp, oil a window, shift the rug six inches. And leave the blanket box where it is. Before the summer is out somebody will sit on it at the top of the stair to say goodnight.