Skylights and rooflights in Cliffe Woods

Stairwell and landing

A window in the slope above the stairs lights the whole drop from landing to hall. If the loft makes that awkward, a sun tunnel can bring light through it. On a flat-roofed part of the house, such as a single-storey side extension, a flat roof rooflight does an equivalent job for the room beneath. With the landing doors open, the light carries into the bedrooms on either side.

The dining room

Between a front window and a kitchen doorway, a dining room can end up with its daylight on one wall only, and the far end sits in the dimmest corner. A chalet bungalow or a bungalow has only roof overhead, so a unit in the slope, or a rooflight where there is a flat section, can go above that corner. Bedrooms over the dining room put the roof out of reach, and the light then has to be added somewhere along the route to it.

Where the dining room has a flat section of roof above it, a rooflight over the end of the table gives the far corner a source of its own. Where the roof is pitched, a roof window between two rafters does the same job, and a blind can shade it at midday.

The box room

Used as a study, the box room needs light across the desk and a way to let stale air out. An opening unit in the roof does both, and its width is set by the rafter gap at the spot where the desk will stand. As a store it needs less, and a fixed unit is enough. Position matters for headroom: the window sits where someone can stand or sit under it, so the sill height is measured from the floor with the desk or the bed in mind.

What the loft has to allow

Before a window is promised we need to see the loft: the rafter spacing, whether a timber crosses the line of the opening, how much insulation has been laid and how high the space is. Those details decide whether the opening can be framed neatly, and they take a few minutes to read from the hatch.

Roof shapes from plot to plot

On a road where each plot was built on separately, one house may have a hipped roof, the next a gable end and a third a dormer. Roof shape decides how long each slope is and how wide the clear gap between rafters runs, and those two measurements decide which size of unit fits. A short hipped slope may take a narrow unit only, while a long gable slope has room for a wider one.

Side extensions

A single-storey side extension often holds a utility room, a garage conversion or a shower room, and the flat roof above is the one place where glass can go straight in. A flat rooflight over a utility room lights it from above, and one over a converted garage lights the full depth of the room. Where such an extension blocks a side window the house once had, the new roof can supply the daylight for both rooms. Over a shower room, a flat rooflight can be specified with obscured glass so the room keeps its privacy while daylight comes in from above.

Slopes and shade

Trees close to a house can shade a roof slope for part of the day. A slope in shade through the afternoon still gives even light, while a clear south-facing slope gives the strongest light and the most heat. Which slope takes the window is settled by the aspect and by where any trees stand.

A listed farmhouse

Mortimer's Farm House is a Grade II listed 17th century farmhouse in the village. If your own house is listed, the steps are in rooflights on listed buildings.

Flat roofs and lanterns

A roof lantern on a flat-roofed extension normally needs planning permission, because of how far it stands above the roof; the lantern planning guide explains. A flat rooflight on the same roof is judged on its own height.

If the house began as something else

An office, shop or barn converted into a house through the change-of-use route has no householder permitted development rights, and a rooflight on it needs an application. A conversion that went through full planning permission keeps its rights unless a condition removed them.

Fixed or opening on a flat roof

A flat rooflight over a utility room or shower room can open to let steam out, and an electric opening rooflight saves climbing for the handle. Over a corridor or a landing a fixed unit does the job. The choice follows what the room is used for.

Building Control

Roof openings are building work, taking in the structure around the cut and the energy performance of the unit. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the Building Regulations guide sets out the standards.

What goes into the figure

A quote for a side extension rooflight and a quote for a stairwell roof window price different things. A side extension rooflight comes with a flat roof covering, a kerb and a decision about how far the glass stands up. A stairwell window comes with a tiled or slated slope, flashing and a shaft to line. Both are written out in full.

In the house

The visit covers the stairwell, the dining room and the box room, and the roof above each. We measure ceiling heights, note how many steps the light has to travel and whether a door at the foot of the stairs blocks it, find the rafters from the loft hatch and note the covering, then agree which position gives the most light. Surveys cost nothing.

Around the village

A Stop Line was constructed in 1940 across the Hoo Peninsula from the Medway to the Thames, and it ran through Cliffe Woods. Cliffe station on the Hundred of Hoo line, open from 1882 until 1961, lay less than a mile north of the village, and the Cobham Estate, based at Cobham Hall, was a major landowner nearby. A roof here is surveyed in the same way as any other.

What to send ahead

An address, the age of the house if you know it, and the rooms that feel dim are the three things that help. A note on whether the house was extended, converted from another building or built with a planning condition attached also helps, since all three change the planning picture.

Where to begin

Pick the room that bothers you most and tell us whether it has bedrooms above it or only roof. That one fact separates the jobs where glass in the roof lights the room itself from the ones where it lights the route to it.

Afterwards

The job closes with the 10-year workmanship guarantee, issued in writing. Messages for the peninsula go to 07880 284133 on WhatsApp or info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and the quote form reaches the same inbox.