Rooflights and skylights for Coxheath homes

The hallway

A hall that runs from the front door towards the back of a house is often shut in by the rooms on either side. Light reaches it from the glazing in the front door and from whichever doors stand open. Where the roof above is a plain pitch, a sun tunnel can bring daylight to the ceiling of the hall without taking the space of a full window. Where the hall is open to the stairs, a roof window above the top flight lights both. We establish which is practical from the loft hatch.

Go up through the hatch, if there is one, and see what sits over the hall ceiling: bare joists and insulation, a water tank, a run of cable, or the roof timbers sloping down to the walls. Each of those points to a different opening, and a photograph of the ceiling and the loft helps us before we arrive.

The bathroom

A bathroom against an inner wall may have no daylight at all. A sun tunnel over a bathroom gives it a daytime light that changes with the weather, and the practical points are on the bathroom sun tunnel page. Where the bathroom lies under a sloping ceiling, a roof window with obscure glass is the other option, and the position of the bath or shower under the slope often settles where it goes. Steam and splashes matter here, so the finish of the shaft or reveal is chosen for a wet room, and the unit is sited so the opening, if it opens, is out of the way of a shower head. In a bathroom the choice often comes down to the roof above: a sun tunnel needs only a small opening and a clear run, and a roof window needs a slope that the bath or shower sits beneath.

Which way the roof faces

The land falls gently towards the Medway valley on the north side of the village and more steeply towards the Low Weald on the south. For a rooflight, what matters is which way the opening faces. A slope facing north gives steady, cool light that suits a hall or a bathroom, while a south-facing one brings more sun and heat into the room below, which can call for solar-control glazing or a blind. We note the direction each opening faces at the survey, because the same unit behaves differently on each side of a house.

Warmth and the roof glass

A pane in the roof loses more heat than the insulated roof beside it, which is the reason the energy limits for roof glazing exist. Choosing a unit that meets its limit, and fitting it with the insulation built up properly around the frame, keeps a stairwell or bathroom from becoming the cold spot of the house. The reasoning is set out in our guide on whether skylights lose heat, and the glazing and the surround are both part of what the quote describes.

What the finished opening looks like

From inside, a roof window shows as a framed rectangle in the sloping ceiling with a lined reveal, usually angled so that light spreads into the room and the lining bounces it on. A sun tunnel shows as a flat or domed diffuser set in a flat ceiling, with no frame in the way. Both are finished and decorated to match the room, and the colour of the lining affects how bright the room reads. White or a pale tone throws more light around than a dark one, so the shade is worth choosing before the decorating starts.

The stairwell

It carries light from one floor to another when it has any, and when it has none, the whole centre of the house feels dark. A roof window over the stairwell lights the landing and spills down onto the hall below. A stairwell also acts as a light well for the floors it serves: whatever arrives at the top of the flight drops past the landing and reaches the hall, as long as the doors at the foot are left open. A deep stairwell with a high ceiling suits a roof window with a lined, splayed shaft, which spreads light more widely than a straight-sided one. The height of the shaft depends on the loft, and we measure that before choosing a size. The glazing in a replacement unit meets the window limit that applies to roof windows in an existing dwelling, 1.4 W/m²K (or Window Energy Rating band B at minimum).

In Coxheath, Heath Road, the B2163, bisects the village and runs through it in a straight line. The houses along it and on the roads around it vary in age, so we treat each one as a single plan to read, not as part of a pattern, and a fixed written quote follows the free survey.

Roof lanterns on flat roofs

A lantern over a flat roof normally rises past the 150 mm limit, which puts it outside Class C: planning permission is the usual route, unless the council confirms otherwise. If a house in Coxheath has a flat-roofed extension and you are thinking of a lantern, the roof lantern planning page is the one to read before anything else.

Roof windows and the paperwork

Cutting a roof open is building work, with structure and energy checks behind it. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the local authority or a registered building control approver signs it off. A flat or a maisonette has no householder permitted development rights at all, so a roof window there goes through the council as an application.

Side slopes, conversions and conditions

Three more things can change the answer for a particular house. Any window on a roof slope forming a side elevation of the house must be obscure-glazed and non-opening unless the parts that open are more than 1.7 m above the floor of the room it is in, which matters on a hipped roof where a slope faces the neighbour. A dwelling made by converting a barn, shop or office through the change-of-use route gets no householder permitted development of its own. And the planning permission for a newer house may carry a condition that took those rights away. We ask for the history of the house before we say what route the job takes.

What the visit settles

Four measurements decide what follows: the pitch of the roof, the clear width between the rafters where the opening will go, the ceiling height in the room below, and the covering on the roof outside. A tile roof, a slate roof and a flat roof all take different flashings and different fixings. The depth of the roof void tells us how long the shaft between roof and room will be, and the room tells us how bright the opening needs to be to make a difference. A deep void gives a long shaft that can be splayed to spread the light, and a shallow one gives a short shaft that reads as little more than a frame.

Choosing the unit for each room

The table is a starting list, and a visit can change it, because the roof over the room may not be what the plan suggests.

Wateringbury and Yalding are also in our area.