Skylight and rooflight fitting in Biddenden
Biddenden is a large agricultural and wooded village, with vineyards and orchards to the west. Houses in a village like this get added to over the years, and the additions are where daylight runs short: the bathroom, the landing, the back of a kitchen extension.
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Where a Biddenden house is dim on a winter afternoon
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1 A bathroom with no outside wall Bathrooms in older houses are often made from a slice of landing or a corner of a bedroom. That can leave them with a small window or none, and a roof opening above is the way to give one daylight. -
2 A landing between two bedrooms Once the bedroom doors are shut, a landing with no window of its own relies on whatever the stairwell lets through. By four o'clock in December that is very little. -
3 Behind a flat-roofed kitchen extension A kitchen built out across the back takes daylight from the room it joined. A rooflight in the new roof, set near the old wall line, lights both.
A village of lanes, orchards and added rooms
How the Weald shapes the houses, and where their rooms lose the light.
Biddenden lies on the Weald of Kent, 5 miles from Tenterden, and it is a large village with farmland and woodland around it. It was a centre for the Wealden iron industry and for clothmaking, and a cottage industry has grown up to the west, where vineyards and orchards produce wines, ciders and juices. It is a civil parish as well as a village, and planning applications there go to Ashford Borough Council.
Older houses of this kind are usually built around a few rooms that open off each other, with window openings sized for the walls of the day. Over time, owners add a bathroom upstairs, a kitchen out the back, a utility along the side. Each addition solves one problem and quietly creates another. The new bathroom sits where the landing window used to be. The kitchen extension covers the window of the room behind it.
| Room | What starves it of light | Where we start looking |
|---|---|---|
| Bathroom | Carved from the landing or a bedroom, so no outside wall | A roof window with obscured glass, or a sun tunnel where the loft is shallow |
| Landing | Doors shut on both sides, stairwell light spent by the top step | A roof window over the stairwell, with the shaft lined down to the ceiling |
| Kitchen extension | Roof added over the room's old window | A flat rooflight or lantern near where the old wall stood |
Added to, one room at a time
The giveaway is a room you walk through to reach somewhere else, or a room where the lights are on all day. It is rarely the whole house that is dim. It is the one room that lost its outside wall, or never had one. Because light from above falls straight down into the room, a single opening in the roof can reach that room without anyone altering the walls or the garden side of the house.
Which way the slope faces
Before any product is chosen, we note the direction each roof slope faces. A north-facing slope gives a steady, even light all day with little direct sun, which suits a bathroom or a study. A south-facing slope brings in warmth and bright patches that travel across the floor, which can be lovely over a landing and less welcome over a bedroom where someone sleeps late. East and west slopes sit between the two. Glazing options, blinds and the size of the opening all follow from that choice.
Rooms under the slope
Older roofs also hide rooms. A bedroom tucked under the pitch can have a low outer wall and a small window, so the ceiling slopes in over the bed. A roof window in that slope lights the room from the one place the walls have not already used up. The same applies to a small second bedroom or a box room, where a roof window doubles the light sources and a blind keeps the morning sun off the bed.
Bathrooms and landings under the roof
Steam, privacy and a small floor make a bathroom a different job from a bedroom. In a family bathroom, light from the roof is most useful on winter mornings, when the household is up before the sun has reached any side window. If there is a loft directly above, a roof window in the slope brings light in at ceiling level, and an opening unit lets steam out while you bathe. Obscured glass keeps the room private from neighbours and from anyone on a hill. Where the roof is a long way above the bathroom ceiling, or the rafters leave no room for a window, a sun tunnel in a bathroom carries daylight down through the loft through a slim tube.
Landings ask a different question. A landing opening is also a way to add daylight without disturbing the bedrooms around it, because the work stays in the roof and the ceiling. They are narrow, they are shared by every bedroom, and the stairwell below them is usually open to the hall. A rooflight above the stairs throws light down the whole well, so the hall gets some of it too. We look at where the stair rises, because the opening should sit over the upper flight or the landing rather than over the stairs' headroom, where the cut rafters and the head height can clash.
From the loft hatch to a lit landing
- Find the timbers We measure rafter spacing and loft depth to see where a frame can go.
- Agree unit and glass Fixed or opening, clear or obscured, chosen for the room.
- Cut in and weather Opening framed, unit set, flashings dressed into the covering.
- Line the reveal The shaft is boxed in, plastered or lined, and left ready to paint.
Steam and fresh air
A bathroom roof window that opens gives you a way to clear steam after a shower, and a rain sensor or a shut-off position keeps the weather out when you are not in the room. Position matters here: an opening near the top of the slope sits close to the ridge of the bathroom ceiling, where warm damp air gathers. If a fixed unit is the better fit for the roof, an extractor fan can sit alongside it and we plan for the cable and duct at the survey.
Steep stairs and narrow wells
Stairs in older houses are often steep and boxed in, with a landing at the top barely wider than the door. Light from above is the only way to brighten them without moving a wall. The opening goes over the landing or the upper flight, and the lined shaft below it is angled or splayed so the light spreads into the corners. A frosted or obscured pane over a bathroom shaft does the same job for privacy, so you can leave the bathroom door ajar.
What happens in the loft
A fresh opening in the slope has to deal with whatever rafters run through it. The opening is framed with trimmers, the rafters are supported, and the frame is flashed into the tiles. In an older roof the timbers may be irregular, so we measure the actual spacing. The shaft between roof and ceiling is then boxed in and lined, which is the part you will see from the landing every day.
That is also the moment we sort out the paperwork side. A new opening in a roof is building work, and we handle the Building Control notification where it is notifiable. Our roof window page covers the products if you want to look at the range before we visit.
Behind the kitchen extension, and who to ask
A kitchen extension is where the dim room is easiest to spot. The new space has glass on the garden side, while the older room behind it is left with a window that now looks into a roofed-over annexe. Putting the rooflight near the joint, where the new roof meets the old wall, lets light fall onto the older room's side of the opening. A flat roof rooflight is the simpler choice. A raised roof lantern gives a taller ceiling, and it will usually need planning permission, which is the one rule worth knowing before you choose between them.
The roof underneath matters as much as the room. A warm flat roof, a cold one and an older felt roof each need the upstand and the insulation dealt with in a slightly different way, which is why we climb up before we price. A lantern also brings a taller glazed profile into the room, so the ceiling below it is shaped to suit, and a flat rooflight leaves a plain ceiling with a clean opening. A splayed lining widens the opening on the room side, while a plain flush opening reads as a window in the ceiling. On an older house the extension stands against the original wall, and the brickwork or render is checked where the new flashing meets it.
Myth
A bathroom roof window will leave the room colder.
Fact
A new roof window in an existing home has to meet the window limit in Part L of the Building Regulations, 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating band B, and we specify the glazing for the room.
Light that reaches the old room
With an extension, the aim is to get daylight into the older room as well as the new one. A rooflight placed squarely in the middle of the new space can miss the older room. We would rather mark the old wall line on your ceiling with chalk, then slide the opening towards it until it straddles the join between the two rooms. You can stand under it and see where the light will fall before the roof is touched.
Planning in Biddenden
Ashford Borough Council is the local planning authority. Biddenden has a conservation area of its own name. Whether your house falls inside it depends on your address and on the planning history of the house, and the limits we check it against are laid out in the planning guide. Where a conservation area makes an application sensible, the conservation area rooflight guide explains what changes inside one.
Getting to you
From Maidstone to Biddenden is roughly 15 miles by road. The first visit costs nothing, and the fixed written quote after it names the unit, the glazing and the finish inside. To book, message us on WhatsApp (07880 284133) or write to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk; the form below reaches the same inbox. A 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing goes with the finished job.
A windowless bathroom and the conservation area
When do I get a price for a roof window in Biddenden?
Once we have been up into the roof, because the loft and the covering decide what the job involves.
Biddenden has its own conservation area. What does that change for a roof window on my house?
On its own, nothing about permitted development: a conservation area does not remove those rights for a house, and an Article 4 direction does. It can change which rooflight suits and which slope it sits on. Our conservation area guide covers how that works.
The bathroom is in the middle of our first floor and has no window at all. What would go in the roof?
The loft above decides it. With room between the rafters, a roof window brings light in directly. Where the loft is shallow, or the roof is some distance above the ceiling, a sun tunnel does the job, with obscured glass or a frosted diffuser at the ceiling end.
Nearby towns to Biddenden
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