Skylights and rooflights in Bearsted

Estate houses and what has been added to them

Estates of that decade often follow a repeated plan, with pairs or short terraces of similar houses, and owners have often adapted them since. One change is a ground-floor extension that opens up the back: a kitchen extended outwards, a utility room alongside, sometimes a garage turned into living space.

The utility room in such houses tends to sit between the kitchen and the garden door with a single small window, and a flat ceiling with a loft, a bedroom or a flat roof above. If the roof lies directly overhead, a compact roof window or a small flat rooflight puts daylight onto the machines and worktop. If there is a loft in between, a sun tunnel carries it down. Where a bedroom sits above the utility room, neither works.

A kitchen extension on one of these houses behaves differently. The extension roof is often flat, and a single rooflight placed towards the house wall lights the stretch the garden doors miss. How big to make it, and whether a fixed or an opening unit suits, depend on the room and on the roof build-up above it. Our page on flat roof rooflights covers the types.

Wall units, a tall larder cupboard or a cooker hood can take over the house-side wall, so the glass is best set to light the aisle between worktops. We mark the spot on the ceiling with you in the room, standing where you cook, before we draw it up. Glare on a hob or a screen is easier to avoid when the unit is placed with that in mind.

The utility room has its own habits. Wet washing, a tumble dryer and a boiler can add moisture to a small space, so a roof window that opens gives the air somewhere to go. A fixed rooflight needs the room's extractor to do that work instead. Either way, we run the ventilation and the glazing specification into the same quote.

Garage conversions are another way these houses grow. A garage turned into a playroom or office usually keeps its low flat or lean-to roof and loses its door, so the light comes from the front and nowhere else. Glass in the ceiling is often the only way to avoid a long, dim room.

Houses of the 1960s often have a hall and landing that sit together in the middle of the plan, with the stairs rising against a party wall. A landing like that borrows light from the bedroom doors, and a roof window above the stair or a sun tunnel through the loft lights both floors at once. The choice depends on whether the roof over the stairwell is a pitch or a flat section, and whether the loft above has been boarded or converted.

Older houses on the village side may have deep roofs with long rafters, and the room under them is often the one with a single window. A roof window there is sized from the rafter spacing and the line of the original slope, and the frame colour is picked against the tiles.

Which way the roof faces

The village lies at the foot of the North Downs, and the Pilgrims' Way and the North Downs Way both run along the hills to the north. A stream, the Lilk, flows south through Bearsted into the Len. For a rooflight, what matters from all this is orientation. A slope that faces the Downs looks north, and gives a cool, even light that suits a study or a utility room. A slope facing south, towards the Len, catches more sun and warmth, which is welcome in a kitchen in January and a matter for glazing and blinds in July. We note the compass direction of every opening at the survey, because the same unit behaves differently on each side of a house.

The box room

A box room is the small third bedroom, or the loft space used as a study or a walk-in store. It rarely has more than one window, and where it sits under the roof, the window may be a dormer or a gable-end pane that lights one wall. A roof window in the slope sends light across the floor and ceiling together, so the room feels deeper and less boxed in. We choose the frame size with the rafter spacing in mind, and the bottom edge of the glass needs to sit at a height you can reach. A bed or desk pushed under the slope changes where the best spot is, so we ask where the furniture will go. Where a loft room is already in use, the roof window also becomes the way air moves through it, so the opening type is chosen with the bed or desk position in mind.

A box room used as a home office has its own concern. Daylight from above lands on the desk and the screen at different angles through the day, so we think about blinds and the direction the slope faces. An east or west slope throws low sun across a desk at the start or end of the day, while a north one stays steady.

For a box room that serves as a child's bedroom, ventilation matters as much as daylight. A roof window you can tilt open is more useful there than a fixed pane, and the choice affects the quote.

Reading the roof before we quote

On the day, we start at the loft hatch or under the flat deck. Roof coverings, rafter spacing, any insulation and the position of the party wall all feed into which unit goes where. In a village with older houses and newer estate houses, roofs differ from one house to the next, and a neighbour's job tells us little about yours. At the survey we look at the opening, the finish inside and the access.

You may want a visit outside office hours. That is a normal request and we plan around it.

Conservation areas in the village

Conservation areas near the village centre include Bearsted, the Bearsted Extension and Bearsted Village Green and Holy Cross Church. The council's own map is the thing to check for your address. The conservation area rooflight guide explains where the details start to matter, such as the choice of unit and the slope it faces.

The council and the paperwork

Applications from Bearsted go to Maidstone Borough Council. Whether a given unit can go in without an application depends on the roof, the house and its history, and the conditions are in the planning permission guide. The guide also covers the raised lantern, which usually does need an application.

The structural side is separate. An opening in a roof is building work, and we handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable. The Building Regulations guide lists what is examined.

What happens after you get in touch

A WhatsApp to 07880 284133 is the quickest start, and info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk reaches the same people. The quote form is there as well. We visit, measure, and then give you a fixed written quote after a free survey. The workmanship guarantee runs for 10 years and is set out in writing.

Further out, we also work at Kingswood, Sutton Valence and Coxheath.