Skylights and rooflights in Kingswood, Kent
Kingswood lies within the Maidstone District, close to our base. Which room in your house has no outside wall to bring daylight in?
- Free survey, fixed written quote
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
Where a village house loses its daylight
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1 The garden room's far end Doors and side glazing light the near part of a garden room. A rooflight above the back of the floor reaches the part those windows leave in shade. -
2 A loft room under the slope The sloping ceiling takes headroom on both sides, and a roof window above the strip you walk along lights it from overhead. -
3 The hall at the foot of the stairs A hall with no outside wall can borrow daylight through a tube or a window in the slope above the stairs.
A village house, room by room
Kingswood sits close to Maidstone, so a survey visit is a short trip.
Within the Maidstone District, Kingswood is a village that shares a civil parish with Broomfield. By road it lies about 6 miles south-east of our base. We start from the shape of your own house and work out which room is short of daylight.
Any house takes its light through the outside walls, so a room that lacks one, or has one that has been built against, gets by on spill from the next room. That describes stairs, halls, rooms deep in the plan and rooms in the roof.
| The question | Who decides | Where it is explained |
|---|---|---|
| Does a house rooflight need an application? | Maidstone Borough Council, as planning authority | Skylight planning guide |
| Is the new opening built to standard? | The council or a registered building control approver | Building Regulations guide |
| Is the house itself listed? | Maidstone Borough Council, through listed building consent | Rooflights on listed buildings |
The garden room and the extended back of the house
If you have added a garden room, an orangery or a single-storey extension, the new space is bright where the glass is and dim a few metres back. Large doors and side glazing light the nearest part of the floor. The back of the room, where a sofa or a desk sits, wants another source, and the roof above it is the one surface with no neighbour or fence in the way. A flat rooflight sits on an upstand on a flat roof, and a raised glass lantern does the same job on a larger scale. Our flat roof rooflight page explains how the upstand is built and made watertight.
Where trees or a neighbouring roof shade the glazing, as can happen with any garden room, a rooflight looks straight up to the sky instead of across to whatever stands in the way. Because a lantern usually stands more than 150 mm proud of the roof, it normally lands outside Class C and brings a planning application with it. The lantern planning guide covers that case.
For a garden room or extension with a flat roof, we check the covering, the falls and the direction the joists run before picking the glazed unit, because those decide the size of opening and the height of the upstand the unit sits on, and the lining is finished inside to suit.
Looking at the roof first
From the garden, a roof tells you a good deal. A flat roof over a rear extension points to a rooflight or lantern. A pitched slope with tiles points to a roof window or a tube. A slope that already has a window in it shows how the existing frame is flashed, and whether the new unit can sit near it. Photographs of the front, the back and the dark room let us narrow the options before the visit.
The hallway without a wall
The hallway of a two-storey house, with the front door at one end and the stairs along a side, often has no window of any size. If the loft above is still a loft, a sun tunnel can bring daylight from a dome on the slope to a ceiling fitting below, bending around the rafters on the way. If the stairs rise through a tall space under the roof, a window directly above lights the flight itself. Both can leave the front elevation alone where the unit goes in the rear slope. Our sun tunnel page compares the tube types.
Landings and upstairs corridors
The landing sits at the top of the same stairwell, with bedroom doors on either side and closed walls beyond them. It is also the area that daylight from overhead reaches most directly, because only the roof space lies above it. One window over the stairwell can brighten the flight and the landing together. Where the hall below has no window either, that single opening serves two floors, and the choice of unit comes down to the pitch of the slope and the distance to the stairs. We measure from the ceiling fitting up to the roof, so we know the length of any tube and how many bends it needs before the quote is written.
Flat rooflight, lantern or roof window
The names matter because the fitting differs. A rooflight stands out of the plane of the roof on a kerb or upstand, and a roof lantern counts as a rooflight. A roof window lies in the same plane as the slope around it, which on a pitched roof means flush with the tiles. A flat roof usually takes a rooflight, a lantern or a sun tunnel; a pitched roof usually suits a roof window, with a sun tunnel as the alternative. The quote names the unit, its size code and the glazing.
The loft room and Maidstone Borough Council
A loft is where a roof window needs the most care under the rules. Under a pitched roof the sloping ceiling eats headroom on both sides, so the floor you can stand on is a strip down the middle, and a window above that strip lights it from overhead. In a bungalow or chalet bungalow, the rooms in the roof can use a roof window as their escape window, on the terms the Building Regulations guide gives. A two-storey house is different: converting its loft creates a storey more than 4.5 m up, which normally needs a protected route down the stairs. Every figure for escape and storey height is in the Building Regulations guide.
Sizes are written in codes. In MK04, the letters give the width and the digits the height, so a list of units that suit your rafter spacing can be drawn up before anyone climbs onto the roof.
Roof words in a loft-room job
- Chalet bungalow
- A bungalow with its upper rooms inside the roof, lit by roof windows or dormers.
- Protected stair
- A stair enclosed so that it stays usable as the way down if a fire starts.
- Registered building control approver
- A private body registered to check building work in place of the council's own team.
- Obscure glazing
- Glass you cannot see through clearly, fitted where a window would look onto a neighbour.
Pitch, headroom and where the window goes
The pitch of the roof sets the first limit. Roof windows are made for a range of pitches, and our minimum pitch guide explains what happens at the shallow end. Headroom sets the second. A window set too high in the slope lights the ceiling and leaves the floor in shade, and one set too low looks at the wall. We mark the position from inside the room, standing where you would stand, and check it against the rafters from the loft before a single tile is lifted. If the room has a gable end, we also look at whether a window in the end wall, which needs no roof opening, can share the work. Light from a roof window in the slope arrives from the other direction, so the room is lit from two sides and the walls stay evenly bright. Inside, the lining of the opening is angled, which spreads the light across the sloping ceiling and down onto the floor strip you walk along.
Opening or fixed
A roof window can be fixed shut or made to open, and the choice changes how the room behaves through the year: an opening unit lets warm air leave a loft room in summer and gives the bedroom a way to air, while a fixed unit costs less to maintain and has no moving parts to weather. Some units open electrically, which suits a window out of reach above a stairwell. Our electric opening rooflights page explains the power and control options, and the quote lists whichever you choose.
Maidstone Borough Council, and how to find out what applies
Maidstone Borough Council decides any planning application for a Kingswood house, and often the first question is whether one is needed at all. The answer turns on the kind of house, on how it came to be a house, and on any condition attached to its first permission. A home carved out of another building under change-of-use permitted development starts without householder rights, whereas one made through a full planning application holds them unless the permission removed them. See the planning guide for the rules; the survey fits them to your roof.
Cutting a hole in the slope brings Building Regulations into play, so the timbers round the gap must take the load the cut ones carried, the glass must meet the heat-loss limit for its type, and a loft room can raise fire and escape questions. Where the work is notifiable we handle the Building Control notification, and the council or a registered building control approver signs the job off.
Flashings and glass
A roof window needs a flashing kit that suits the roof covering, whether that is plain tiles, interlocking tiles or slate, and we specify the kit once we have seen the covering. The glass is the other decision. A new or replacement roof window takes the window limit for heat loss, 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating band B at minimum, and a rooflight or lantern takes 2.2 W/m²K, so the glazing follows the product. Our U-values explained guide shows how to read those numbers on a quote.
Next steps
The survey carries no charge, and after it comes a fixed written quote, backed by a written 10-year workmanship guarantee. A photo of the dark room, sent by WhatsApp to 07880 284133 or by email to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, gets things moving.
Garden rooms, lofts and stairs
Our garden room is bright at the doors and dim at the back. Where does the light go?
Doors and side windows reach only the nearest stretch of floor. A rooflight above the back of the room covers the rest, and its position follows the layout of the furniture and the roof structure.
Which gets more light onto stairs, a tube or a window?
With a loft that has not been boarded out, a window in the slope above the stairs lets in the most. Where the loft has been converted or is full, a tube bends around what is in the way.
Who signs off a new roof window in Kingswood?
Either the council's building control team or a registered building control approver. The notification is ours to handle where the work is notifiable.
What should I tell you about a house that used to be a barn?
Tell us whether the building was converted under change-of-use permitted development or given full planning permission as a dwelling. The first route loses householder rights; the second keeps them unless a condition took them away. The planning guide explains.
Which loft rooms can use a roof window as an escape window?
A bungalow or chalet bungalow can use a roof window as the escape window for its upstairs bedrooms, within the 4.5 m height limit, if the opening is big enough and low enough and the window stays open unaided. A loft on a two-storey house normally needs a protected stair route instead.
Nearby towns to Kingswood, Kent
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