An attic doesn't have to be finished to be functional for everyday living. Don't let raw beams scare you away from using this space. For renters, attic spaces can be a cheap alternative to traditional apartments. For owners, attics can add several hundred square feet to your home, with just a few updates.
If you're a renter, an attic can offer the same amount of space for half the rent of a regular apartment. There are additional benefits. Attics get more light because the views are usually unobstructed and skylights can be installed. Also living in higher spaces can reduce heating bills during the winter. Exposed wooden beams convey a rustic charm that you might not be able to get in a cookie cutter apartment.
Attic spaces offer expansive potential to homeowners. If you've outgrown your house, sometimes it makes more sense to convert an attic or a basement in order to avoid selling in a recessed housing market. Painting the walls and adding more substantial flooring is usually all it takes to create a livable space. Attics can provide a refuge from busy loud households in the form of an office or reading room. Also, attics can serve as makeshift barracks for multiple guests, like holiday guests or traveling groups of friends.
Images: 1. Be Interior Decorator 2. Design Hole Online 3. FFFFound 4. The French Corner 5. Zeo Spot
Before & After: Emily Henderson Transforms a Senior's Studio Space
Danielle's Charming, Classic Walk-Up
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
White Enamel Four-P...
On Saying No to Paleo: Why Eating Isn't One Size Fits All
Perfect Summer Cocktail Recipe: Honey Bourbon Lemonade
I'd like to see some regular single family house attics that one could live in with just added flooring and paint, as the author suggests.
The pictures here are lovely, but 3 of the 5 attics shown are very finished...as in finished with dry wall or lumber, electrical in the wall, functional windows, etc. Two of the attics pictured probably had the "exposed beams" added after the renovation as a design element.
Nothing wrong with suggesting converting an attic...but let's see some conversions.
Attics are often COLDER in winter not warmer, because of insufficient roof insulation.
Ditto Kristine in SB's comment. These are A) not your typical attic spaces, and B) are relatively "finished."
these all look like typical attics in older, fairly grand, Dutch or German homes. The attic was used as servant quarters or drying rooms for laundry, not as storage space. My mum grew up in a house like that and now the house is converted into several flats including one that is just the attic.
Beautiful, but these attics are taller than my whole house. But I can appreciate looking at them at least.
Lovin' these cozy spaces.
The spaces are pretty but the post itself has be baffled. "Don't be afraid of exposed beams?" When everyone and their mother is installing fake exposed beams to get the look?
These spaces are architect-designed and über-finished to have that "rough" look. You can't do actually unfinished, it looks terrible.
Attic? Palace? Is there a diff here?
Attics usually don't have ceiling heights like this. Most of these seem more like a normal top floor, with just angled ceilings.
Great job
Our attic (the only storage we have) has 5' 8" ceilings and no simple place to put access stairs in our tiny home.
The attic spaces I like seeing are when someone else with the same constraints makes it work by magic. Just saying - we have been turning it around like a rubik's cube for five years!
C'mon, guys, show us the way! These magnificent spaces are coming our way when we get our bastide in Hyeres (heh) but in the meantime...how about it?
I live in an attic, and I love it. The space is broken up by strange and oddly shaped dormer windows. We used bright, deep pile carpets to warm it up, and the ceilings have lathe coving the insulation, which is painted white. Yes, it gets a little cold in winter and hot in summer, but with window wrappings, curtains, and a fan it's fine.
The house i live above is 1908 duplex, and I live above one half of the house.
We all have space somewhere in our homes that is not being utilized. Great ideas in these photos especially for a large family that needs more room in a smaller home.
The Designer Insider
Our attic is actually our top floor, and my son's bedroom. When it was built the ladder type staircase passed code, these days it wouldn't, so can't be seen as a permanent bedroom.
We're thinking of doing recessed beds under the eaves like one of your pictures, because that would be stellar (for guests, for having more floor space, etc). Thanks for posting more inspiration for that. We do, however, anticipate it'll be a relatively expensive project (build beds, put in sky light for more lighting? frame the new walls, etc. all while bringing tools up a ladder staircase.)
I agree, though, that many houses aren't built with high-enough roofs to use the space.
p_capucine - Dormers will allow you to stand up in your attic, if you're looking to do that. And if you're just looking for storage, then a set of drop-down stairs should do the trick, along with a door big enough for rubbermaid totes, for storage, colour coded to season, if you need to access the storage stuff on a regular basis. ;)
I'm living in a wee converted attic. There's a window at each end (north and south), two electrical outlets, and wimpy light fixtures. It's tall enough to walk down the center, is freezing in the winter and hot in the summer. Anything that wouldn't fit in a window or the hole for the ladder (my queen bed, regular dresser) didn't fit.
So. It's a quiet little bedroom, and cheap! but that's it.