Rooflights and skylights for Bexley homes

The loft room

In a loft room the sloping roof is the ceiling, and a wall or two are left over for windows. With a window at one gable end or a dormer on one side, the near half of the floor is lit and the far half dims through the afternoon. Glass set into the slope above that far half gives the room a second source from another direction. In a room with a dormer we look at how high the sloping ceiling reaches before it meets the knee wall, since that fixes how low a window can sit.

A loft room on a two-storey house raises an escape question as well, and the answer lies in the stairs. The Building Regulations guide sets it out.

Headroom is the second thing to check in a loft room. A roof window needs the sloping ceiling high enough at its lower edge for you to look out of it, or to reach the catch if it opens. Where the knee wall is low, the window goes further up the slope, and the view becomes sky and treetops. Where the room has a dormer, the window goes in the slope opposite or beside it, so the light comes from a different angle than the dormer glass.

Roof window or rooflight

The two names mean different things. A roof window sits in the plane of the roof, level with the tiles around it, and suits a loft room or a landing on a pitched slope. A rooflight stands on a kerb or upstand out of that plane, which is how a flat roof is glazed. We tell you which of the two you are getting, because the flashing, the planning position and the thermal standard differ between them.

Terraces and party walls

A terraced house shares walls on both sides, so every window is at the front or the back and the middle of the plan has none. The hall and stair of a mid-terrace sit in that middle, and a tall, narrow landing may be the darkest place in the house. The rear slope is the usual route in, and glass over the landing lights the stairs and leaves the front elevation as the street sees it.

Reading the roof from the back garden

A suburban house shows its roofs best from the rear. The main slope, a hipped end, a flat-roofed extension and a porch roof can all be seen at once, and each is a possible home for glass. The rear slope is the usual choice because it leaves the street elevation as it is, and a unit set high on that slope sees more sky than one set low.

The covering matters as much as the position. Concrete tiles, clay tiles and slate need different flashing, and a flat roof in felt or single-ply membrane needs an upstand worked into the build-up. In a terrace the rear slope often shares a chimney or a party wall upstand with the neighbour, which fixes how close a window can sit to the boundary.

Side extensions on a semi

A semi often has a side passage, and a side extension fills it. The hall or kitchen window that looked onto the passage then looks at a wall, or into the new room. The extension roof, flat or pitched, is the route for the missing light, and a rooflight there reaches back into the rooms it was built against.

Washing machines and worktops

Behind the kitchen, a utility is where wall windows run out first. Cupboards and a washing machine claim the wall space a window would use, and an extension built close to the boundary leaves no room for a side window at all. What remains is above. A flat roof rooflight lights the worktop and the drying space directly, and a pitched roof takes a window set high enough that the units beneath stay clear of the opening.

A boiler flue, a tumble dryer vent or a soil pipe each needs its own clearance from the opening. We mark them at the survey and fix the position of the unit around them.

A garage turned into a room

A garage conversion often leaves a flat roof over a deep room with a small window where the door used to be. One or two flat rooflights spread daylight over a study or playroom, and an opening set back from the front wall leaves the face of the house as it was. How the conversion was permitted, and what conditions came with that permission, are the first questions, and the council's planning history for the address answers them.

The hallway

The hall is long and narrow, its front door at the near end and its staircase running up one side. Its daylight comes from the glazing in the door and little else, so the route for light is the stair void above: a window or tube over the landing sends daylight down to the hall. A tube needs only a small opening and a clear path through the loft, which suits a hall where a full window would be awkward to place.

Where a bedroom or loft room sits between the hall ceiling and the roof, the tube has no clear run. The daylight is then brought in higher up the stair void, above the landing.

Old Bexley and Parkhurst

Old Bexley and Parkhurst are among the borough's conservation areas. The council's own page is bexley.gov.uk conservation and heritage, and the conservation area rooflight guide covers what follows from there.

Flats, houses and maisonettes

Bexley has flats and maisonettes as well as houses. The householder rights that let a rooflight go in without an application belong to houses, so a flat is a question for the council from the start. Houses converted into flats are a further case with their own rules. Tell us which you own when you message, and we will say what the survey can establish.

Getting to Bexley

Bexley station has trains to London Charing Cross via Sidcup and to Gravesend, and Transport for London buses join it to Bexleyheath, Sidcup, Dartford and Eltham. The Bourne Road out of Bexley towards Crayford passes Hall Place, the former stately home beside the River Cray, and for a fitting we plan the van, the scaffold or tower position and the route through the house with you beforehand.

Neighbouring towns we cover

North of Bexley is Bexleyheath, Sidcup is south-west, and Joyden's Wood lies south-east. Each has a page of its own: Bexleyheath, Sidcup and Joyden's Wood.

Choosing for the space

In the loft room, ceiling height at the knee wall and the way down the stairs decide how far up the slope a window can sit. In the utility room the covering of the flat roof and the position of the boiler flue come first. For the hall, a torch in the loft above the landing shows whether a tube or a window can run down. Those three checks set which product appears on the quote.

WhatsApp 07880 284133 takes photos of the loft, the utility roof or the hall ceiling; so does info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and the quote form reaches us too. Ten years of workmanship guarantee, in writing, goes with the finished job.