Skylights and rooflights in Boughton under Blean
Boughton has a hamlet on its hill and a main street below, and the road through it once carried traffic from London to Canterbury. Houses on an old through-route are often deep and have been added to, which leaves rooms in the middle of the plan waiting for light from the roof.
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- 10-year workmanship guarantee
Which rooms in a Boughton house lose their daylight?
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1 A bathroom in the middle When a house is extended backwards, the bathroom often ends up between other rooms with no outside wall. Daylight can come down from the roof above, through a light tube or a small window in the slope. -
2 A garden room, dim at the back The glass sits on the garden side, so the far wall stays in shade. A flat rooflight or a lantern above the back half puts light where the doors cannot. -
3 A loft room under the slope A single gable window lights one line across the floor. Glazing in the back slope lights the whole room and leaves the front of the house alone.
A hamlet on the hill, a village at its foot
How the shape of the old village leaves rooms without windows.
Look up Boughton under Blean on a map and the name sits on a hamlet at the top of Boughton Hill. The main village lies at the foot of that hill and is called Boughton Street, and in everyday speech the whole place is just Boughton. We use the full name for all of it, and a survey covers every part of the village and the hill above it.
Boughton also has a history as a through-route. It once stood on the main road between London and Canterbury, and houses along a road like that are often narrow across the front and long behind, because plots along old roads were often cut as thin strips back from the street. Over the years such houses have often been extended backwards, with a kitchen, a bathroom or a utility room added behind the original rooms. Rooms in the middle of that sort of plan end up several metres from any outside wall, so our first questions at a survey follow from the shape: which rooms sit in the middle, and what roof is above each one?
Roof terms for a village house
- Rooflight
- A glazed unit installed out of plane with the surface of the roof on a kerb or upstand. A roof lantern is one.
- Roof window
- A window that lies flat in the roof slope, facing the way the tiles do.
- Sun tunnel
- A light tube: a dome outside, a mirrored pipe through the loft, and a flush panel on the ceiling.
- Upstand
- The raised edge round an opening in a flat roof, on which a rooflight or lantern sits.
Rooms with no outside wall
A deep house has a few places that are dark almost by definition. The landing between two bedrooms has a party wall or a bedroom on both sides. A bathroom or shower room fitted into the middle of the plan during an extension has no outside wall at all, and a hall may borrow what it can through the glass in the front door.
The roof is the one surface those rooms share. Where a loft sits above, a sun tunnel carries daylight down through it and out of a flush fitting in the ceiling. Over a stairwell, a roof window lights the landing and the stairs together. Neither needs anything done to the walls or the front elevation.
Rooms added at the back
An extension solves one problem and makes another. The new room gets glass on the garden side, but the room it was built against can lose the window that used to look out over the garden, and the new space itself tends to be deepest at the point farthest from its doors. A garden room has the same character in a smaller package: bright by the glass, dim at the back wall. A utility room or a side-return kitchen that has been roofed over behaves the same way, because its only window is a door at one end. In a side-return kitchen the glass goes over the stretch of floor furthest from that door.
A flat or shallow roof over a room like that is easy to work with, because the glazing can go exactly where the shadow falls. We read a roof from above and from inside the loft before choosing anything, because the covering, the direction of the joists and the height available decide between a flat rooflight and a raised lantern. Both are on our flat roof rooflight and roof lantern pages.
Bathroom, garden room and loft: what each roof allows
A bathroom with no outside wall has one way to get daylight: from above. In a house with a pitched roof and a loft over the bathroom ceiling, the usual answer is a sun tunnel. A small clear dome on the roof catches the light, a reflective tube runs it down through the loft, and a diffuser sits flush in the bathroom ceiling. The tube needs a path between the rafters and past whatever is stored in the loft, which is why we climb up and look before we recommend one. If the loft is boarded for storage, we say where the boards would need to lift, and what has to move for the tube to pass. A sun tunnel suits a small shower room, because the dome is small and the opening in the ceiling is only the width of the diffuser.
Where the bathroom is under a flat-roofed addition, there is no loft to cross, and a small flat rooflight directly above it is the simpler job. If the bathroom is itself a room in the roof, a window set into the slope can do the work, and a model that opens lets steam out too.
| Room | Roof above it | Product to look at | First thing we check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inner bathroom | Pitched roof with a loft above | Sun tunnel | What sits in the loft above the ceiling |
| Bathroom under a flat-roofed addition | Flat roof | Flat rooflight | Falls, deck and joist direction |
| Garden room | Flat or shallow roof | Flat rooflight or roof lantern | Upstand height and the planning position |
| Loft room | Rear roof slope | Roof window | Rafter spacing and the escape route |
Glass over the back of a garden room
A garden room is usually glazed on the side that faces the garden and closed on the others, so the back of the room sits in its own shade by mid-afternoon. A rooflight above the back half brings the daylight to the part of the room that the doors cannot reach. The glass can be a flat rooflight, which sits low and quiet, or a roof lantern, which rises above the roof and gives the room a feature as well as light. A lantern's sloping glass sends light across the ceiling as well as down onto the floor, which suits a garden room with a plain flat ceiling.
The lantern raises the planning question: it stands proud of a flat roof, and our roof lantern planning guide explains where that leaves you. With a lantern we check the upstand and the structure under it, and we cover all of that in the written quote.
Under the slope
A loft bedroom or study often has a single gable window, or none. That gives light along one line and leaves the sloping sides in shadow. Glazing in the back slope lights the room from above, and the front of the house stays as it is. We measure the rafter spacing from inside the loft, because it decides how wide the opening can be without extra structure. A blind is worth deciding early, since it fits to the window frame and the glazing sets how much heat reaches the bed on a summer afternoon.
Rooms in the roof come with an escape question. Whether a roof window can serve as the way out depends on the type of house and how high the room is above the ground, and the Building Regulations guide sets out the Approved Document B rules. We check the stair and the room height at the survey, before a product is chosen.
Planning, conservation and getting to Boughton
Planning applications in the village go to Swale Borough Council. When one is needed at all is covered in the planning permission guide.
Myth
A rooflight on the back of a house always needs a planning application.
Fact
On a house, a roof window or low rooflight can fall under permitted development. A condition on the house's original permission, or an Article 4 direction, can take that away, so we check your address and your roof. The planning guide has the conditions.
Conservation areas near the village
Conservation areas near the village include Boughton Church and Boughton Street. If one applies, which unit you choose and which way it faces matter most. The conservation area rooflight guide covers those differences in full, and the exact boundaries are checked for your address with Swale.
A house that began as something else
Before talking products, we find out whether the building was always a house. Where a barn, a shop or an office block became a home through the change-of-use route, householder rights were never there to begin with. Where the conversion went through a full planning application instead, the rights stay, unless the permission carried a condition removing them. The decision notice answers that, and we ask to see it when the history is unclear.
From the A2 to your door
From Maidstone, Boughton under Blean is 22 miles by road, heading east. The village sits between Faversham and Canterbury, and we work in both: Faversham and Canterbury each have their own page. A survey in the village is free and ends with a fixed written quote. Where the work is notifiable, we handle the Building Control notification, and the 10-year workmanship guarantee comes in writing.
WhatsApp 07880 284133 or the quote form will book a visit, and so will email to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk. A rough floor plan or a handful of photos of the darker rooms makes the first conversation easier. We can tell from them which rooms have a roof directly overhead, and what to look at first when we visit.
Shower rooms, lanterns and Boughton Street
My downstairs shower room has no window at all. Where could daylight come from?
The roof is the only direction left. With a loft over the ceiling, a sun tunnel brings a pipe of light down from a dome. Where the roof is flat, a small flat rooflight goes straight above. The loft and the roof covering settle which one fits.
We live on Boughton Street. Does the conservation area stop us fitting a roof window?
There is a conservation area called Boughton Street. Sitting inside one leaves permitted development rights for a house as they were, and only an Article 4 direction removes them. Should an application be needed, the window's type and position carry the weight. Our conservation area guide has the detail.
The far end of our garden room is always gloomy and the roof is flat. What would suit it?
A flat rooflight over the back half is the quiet option, and a roof lantern is the taller one. The lantern is the one that brings planning into it, so read the roof lantern planning guide before you decide. We look at the covering, the joists and the height available at the visit.
What should I know about fire escape before we glaze the room in our roof?
The answer depends on the house type and the room's height above the ground: a two-storey house with a loft room is treated differently from a bungalow or chalet. Our Building Regulations guide sets out how Approved Document B treats each.
Nearby towns to Boughton under Blean
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