Brabourne Lees skylights and rooflights
Brabourne Lees grew on former pasture, the lees of its name, below the North Downs. A utility room, a dining room or a long lounge in a house there can sit well away from any outside wall, and the roof is often the quickest way to reach it.
- Free survey, fixed written quote
- 10-year workmanship guarantee
Houses on the old lees, and the rooms that lose out
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1 A utility room with one small window A utility room tucked between the kitchen and the garden wall is usually given a small window, or none. Daylight from the roof above gives it a proper working light. -
2 The dining room in the middle A dining room with a lounge on one side and a kitchen on the other can end up with a single window, and a garage or conservatory outside it takes that away. -
3 Through-lounges, bright only at the ends A lounge that runs the full depth of the house gets light at the front and the back. The stretch between, where the sofas sit, is the part that stays dim.
Three rooms that stay dim in a village house
Houses differ from street to street, but the way a room loses daylight stays much the same.
The village stands where grazing land once lay, beneath the North Downs, and lees is the old word for that pasture. It belongs to the civil parish of Brabourne, in the Ashford borough of Kent. We begin with the room.
Rooflight and roof window, as a quote uses them
- Rooflight
- A glazed unit installed out of plane with the roof surface, on a kerb or upstand. A roof lantern is a rooflight.
- Roof window
- A window sitting level with the roofing around it, like the ones in a loft slope.
- Sun tunnel
- A small dome on the tiles, with a tube down to a ceiling diffuser, for rooms that do not sit directly beneath the roof.
- Upstand
- The raised lip on a flat roof that the rooflight frame is fixed to.
The utility room
A utility room is the hardest-working small room in a house and often the dimmest. It has been fitted in beside the kitchen, in a former store or at the end of a garage, with the washing machine, the boot rack and a sink under whatever window the builder left. If the roof above it is a single-storey flat or lean-to, a flat rooflight over the worktop lights the room from directly above. Under a pitched roof, you would choose between a roof window and a tube-and-dome sun tunnel, the latter if the ceiling void leaves room for the tube.
Moisture matters in a utility room, so we talk about an opening unit at the survey. A fixed rooflight lets light in and no steam out, whereas an opening one can do both.
The dining room
A dining room tends to sit between the lounge and the kitchen. If it ever had a window of its own, that window is usually on a side wall, and a side wall is where garages, fences and neighbouring houses crowd in. The room that looks bright at a family supper is dim at lunch. With a bedroom directly above it, the only route for roof light is a sun tunnel run up through the first floor, which depends on what lies between the ceiling and the roof. With an extension or a single-storey link beside it, a rooflight on that lower roof can throw light back through the old window opening.
The through-lounge
A through-lounge, a front room and a dining room knocked into one, is bright at each end and darker between. The sofas and the television sit in the dimmer stretch. A roof window or a rooflight cannot light a room that lies under a full second storey, but it can light one under an extension or a porch roof, and in a bungalow it can light a room straight from the roof void. We look for the part of the room that sits under a roof we can open.
When the extension is the answer
A rear extension with a flat roof is often where a utility room or a dining room ends up, and it is a forgiving roof to work on. A flat rooflight, or else a raised lantern where there is height and the planning position allows it, brings daylight down into the space that the extension has made deep. The flat roof rooflights page describes the range, and the roof lanterns page covers the taller option.
Reading the roof from the garden
Stand at the bottom of the garden and look back. You will see which parts of the house have a roof of their own: a rear extension, a lean-to, a flat-roofed garage, a porch. Each of those is a place where light can enter, and each lies above a room that may well be short of it. The ridge and the main slope belong to the bedrooms and the loft.
The covering matters as well. Tiles, slates and felt each take a different flashing or upstand, and the choice of unit follows from that.
Bungalows and rooms in the roof
Where a house is a bungalow or has a room in the roof, the dim space is often the hall or the landing, with no outside wall at all. A roof window right above it lights the space straight away. Rooms in the roof have their own rules on openings and escape, which the Building Regulations guide sets out, and we check the height and size of the opening against them before a unit is chosen.
Light that moves through the day
Rooflights face the way the roof faces. A rear slope looking south lights a room through the day and warms it, and a north-facing slope gives an even, cooler light. In the utility room that hardly matters. In a lounge where people sit in the evening it matters a good deal, and we talk through glass and blinds with you before you decide.
The same unit in a different position behaves differently, so a few hundred millimetres either way along a roof can change what the room feels like. We mark the position out from inside the room, looking up, before anything is ordered.
Thinking about the extension roof
An extension roof meets the house wall along one edge, and the unit sits a little way out from that junction so the flashing has room. The spacing of the joists under a flat roof, or the rafters under a lean-to, then decides how wide the opening can be without extra framing. A utility or dining room under a single-storey roof has more choices here than a room under a full second storey, which has none.
Inside, the lining round the opening is finished ready to decorate. A splayed lining, with its sides angled outwards, spreads light across more of the ceiling than a square one, and a white finish keeps a small utility bright and easy to wipe down. Where the extension has a pitched roof with a ridge, the window goes on the slope that faces the garden, which keeps the street side of the roof plain.
Ashford's rules, and how a job gets going here
Any planning question for Brabourne Lees goes to Ashford Borough Council. Whether your house can take a rooflight or roof window without an application depends on its type and history, and the skylight planning guide lays out the conditions. When we visit we compare your roof with them. It helps us if you can say when the house was built and whether it began life as something other than a home.
A new roof opening is classed as building work, with structure, energy and escape to consider. The Building Regulations guide explains each one. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable.
Planning and sign-off terms
- Permitted development
- Work that can go ahead without a planning application, because national rules allow it.
- Article 4 direction
- A council direction withdrawing named permitted development rights across a defined area.
- Building Control notification
- The notice that tells the building control body about notifiable work so it can be inspected and signed off.
The drive from Maidstone
Brabourne Lees is about 25 road miles south-east of our Maidstone base, near the outer edge of what we cover and still inside it. A free survey comes first, and nobody is asked to commit afterwards.
What the visit settles
Three questions are answered on the day: which room needs lifting, which stretch of roof sits above or beside it, and which product fits that stretch. A flat roof over a utility room takes a flat rooflight. A pitched slope takes a roof window. A room beneath a full storey takes a sun tunnel if the route is clear. If the route is blocked, a different room or roof may be the better place to spend the money.
Out of those answers comes a fixed written quote naming the unit, its glass, everything done to the roof and everything done to the ceiling below. The figure moves with the size of the opening, the roof covering, how far up and how far along we must reach, and the glazing specification. At the end you receive our 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing.
Neighbouring places
Wye lies to the north, and Finberry and Ashford both lie to the west. If a friend on one of those roads has asked about a rooflight, our pages for Wye, Finberry and Ashford describe those places.
To start, send a WhatsApp message to 07880 284133, write to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, or use the enquiry form underneath.
Before you get in touch
A few details make the first reply more useful:
- The room you would like lighter, and the time of day it feels darkest.
- What sits above it: a bedroom, the loft, or a flat or sloping roof.
- Whether the house has been extended, and on which side.
- A photograph of the roof from the garden, if you can take one safely from the ground.
A dim utility room or lounge
Is Brabourne Lees too far out for a free survey?
No. It sits inside the area we cover. If you are planning work on more than one room, a single visit can look at them all.
Which council do I ask about planning for a roof window in Brabourne Lees?
Ashford Borough Council. For a first answer on whether an application is needed, the planning guide shows what to look at: the unit's height above the roof, which slope it is on, and what sort of building yours is. We run through the same points on the roof at the survey.
Our utility room has a tiny window and the laundry never dries. What would suit it?
An opening rooflight on a flat roof or an opening roof window on a pitched one, so that steam can leave as well as light getting in. The roof above the room and the make-up of the ceiling decide which, and a sun tunnel is the fallback when a bedroom sits right above.
My dining room window looks onto a side wall. Can the roof help?
When the dining room has a single-storey roof above or beside it, a rooflight there can send daylight in. When a bedroom sits directly above, the answer is a sun tunnel, and only if the route between roof and ceiling is clear.
We have a through-lounge that is dark in the middle. Which roof do you look at?
The part of the lounge that sits beneath a roof you can open: a rear extension, a porch or the roof void of a bungalow. A stretch of the room that lies under two full storeys has no roof of its own to light it, and in that case the better answer is usually to brighten the neighbouring room or the stairwell instead.
How do blinds work on a rooflight over a lounge?
Blinds can be added to roof windows and fitted near rooflights, so you can cut glare for the television or darken a room in the evening. We talk through where the screen and the seating sit before the position is fixed.
Nearby towns to Brabourne Lees
Book your free survey
Tell us about the room that stays dark. We come out, look at the room and the roof, then send a fixed written quote.
Or on 07880 284133, or call 01622 277162
No obligation. We survey before we price.