Folding timber loft ladders
Folding timber ladders fold into the loft and need little space below, but check the landing and ceiling height first.
See folding timber ladders →You have a loft hatch, and a ladder to choose for it
Five measurements decide whether a ladder will fit: the opening, the floor-to-ceiling height, the landing below it and the space above. Work through them here, with figures read from the makers themselves.
The five measurements to take before you look at a ladder
Before any ladder goes anywhere near a catalogue, five numbers from your own home decide whether it will fit. Three come from the hatch and ceiling, one comes from the landing below, and one comes from the loft itself.
- Opening length and opening width are the two sides of the hatch itself. The roof above often sets a practical limit on how large this can be. The Trussed Rafter Association gives the normal spacing of trussed rafters as 600 mm, and says a hatch should fit between two trusses unless the roof has been specially designed for it. No Building Regulation or Approved Document we have read sets a size for a loft hatch, so the figure you are actually working to is whatever gap your own roof structure allows. Where the existing opening is smaller than you need, enlarging a loft hatch explains what changes once a truss is involved.
- Floor-to-ceiling height is the distance from the landing floor up to the underside of the hatch. Some makers quote this as floor-to-floor height instead, measuring up to the finished floor of the loft rather than the ceiling line; the two are not quite the same measurement, and it is worth knowing which one a maker's chart is giving you.
- Landing length is the clear floor space below the hatch, running out from the wall or the point where the ladder pivots. Some makers call this swing clearance, the length of landing the ladder needs to open out fully. A narrow landing, a door that opens into it, or a stud wall close to the hatch can all shorten this number before you have even picked up a tape measure.
- Space above in the loft is what the ladder and its mechanism need once it is folded, slid or stowed away. A low loft, a water tank, or roof timbers close to the opening can all eat into this, and it matters as much as the four measurements taken from below.
Taking all five before you compare any model is what tells you which ladders are worth looking at at all, and which ones were never going to fit your hatch whatever they cost. Fitting a loft ladder covers what happens once those measurements are in hand.
What a loft ladder decision comes down to
A hatch and a decision usually break into the same few questions, each with an answer below.
Electric loft ladders
An electric ladder opens and closes at a switch, trading stored loft space for a socket nearby.
See electric ladders →Fitting a loft ladder yourself
Some installs are a weekend job for two people; others call for a carpenter or a structural engineer.
Check what the job involves →Enlarging a small hatch
Whether you can cut a bigger opening depends on whether the roof above is trussed or a traditional cut roof.
Read about enlarging a hatch →Fire-rated hatches and ladders
A hatch near a stairwell in a taller house may need to resist fire for a set time.
Check fire-rated hatch rules →What happens when a maker's own figures don't agree?
Every dimension on this site is read from a maker's own published material, and most of the time the maker's various pages agree with each other without any trouble. Now and then they don't, and when a maker's measuring instructions and its product tables say two different things about the same number, that's worth knowing before you measure your own landing against either one.
TB Davies and swing clearance
Swing clearance is the length of floor the ladder needs below the hatch to open out fully. TB Davies uses this name for it too; on this site it's counted as one of the five measurements, landing length.
TB Davies's page on measuring for a ladder asks for at least 550 mm of swing clearance. Its product tables, for the same models, list that same figure as a maximum. One document is treating 550 mm as a floor, the other as a ceiling.
Where a maker's own documents pull in different directions like this, both figures are shown here. If your landing comes out close to 550 mm, that's a case for checking with TB Davies directly before you order, since a minimum and a maximum point to opposite decisions about whether the ladder will fit.