Skylight and rooflight fitting in Crowborough

The garden room at the back

A garden room fixed to the back of a house gets glass on three sides, and it is bright from the first morning. The room it was joined to is the one that pays. If that room used to have a window or a pair of French doors looking onto the garden, the new room now stands where the daylight used to arrive, and what comes through is a borrowed, flattened version of it. People notice at about four in the afternoon in autumn, when the lamp goes on in the old room while the garden room is still glowing.

The roof of the garden room is the cure. A flat rooflight set into it, close to the line where the old back wall meets the new structure, drops light down that line and into the room behind. On a garden room with a pitched or glazed roof, the slope closest to the house can take a roof window that does the same work. Which one fits depends on the build of the roof and the height of the room, and both are things we measure. The flat roof rooflight page shows what goes into that choice.

The stairwell in the middle

Upstairs, the problem is a stairwell that touches no outside wall. In a deep house the stairs often rise from a hall at the centre of the floor, with rooms on either side. The landing at the top is a corridor with doors, and daylight arrives only when one of those doors is open. A roof window over the stairwell lights the landing and, through the balusters, the hall below. Where the loft is too deep or too cluttered for a roof window to line up with the stairs, a sun tunnel can carry daylight down through the loft from a dome fixed outside on the tiles. A sun tunnel suits a landing best when the stairs are a long way from the ridge, and a roof window suits it when they sit close under the slope.

The same thinking applies to a cloakroom or utility tucked under the stairs. Those rooms usually have no outside wall either, and whether a tunnel from the roof can reach them depends on what lies above.

Hills add one more point. A house built into a slope can have a roof that is easy to reach on one side and awkward on the other. We note that at the survey, because it decides how the unit gets up to the roof and which slope it sits on.

What the planning rules turn on

A house can usually take a roof window without an application if the unit stands no more than 150 mm proud of the original slope, but that depends on the type of house, its planning history and the slope it faces. A raised lantern over a flat roof clears that height in the normal case, so it generally needs an application unless Wealden confirms otherwise. The conditions are laid out in our guide to planning permission for skylights, and we test them against your roof when we visit. If your house was converted from an office, a shop or a barn under change-of-use permitted development, or is a flat or maisonette, it has no householder permitted development rights, and the guide covers that too.

The conservation area

Part of the town lies in Crowborough Conservation Area, and we check your address against what Wealden holds. Living inside a conservation area does not by itself remove permitted development rights for a rooflight; an Article 4 direction does. If an application is required, what weighs most is the type of rooflight and which way its slope faces. Our conservation area rooflight guide covers the detail.

Building Control

Cutting a new opening through a roof is building work. The structure has to be reframed to carry what the cut timbers carried, and the new glass has to meet the energy limit for its type: a replacement or new roof window is held to 1.4 W/m²K (or Window Energy Rating band B), and a rooflight or lantern to 2.2 W/m²K. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the council or a registered building control approver signs it off. What an inspector looks at is listed in our Building Regulations guide. A loft room adds fire and escape questions to the list, and those are dealt with before the opening is cut.

The cut itself is done in one visit where the weather allows, and the opening is made watertight before we leave each day. Inside, the new reveals are lined and left ready for decoration.

Orientation matters in a long room. A slope that faces the sun brings warmth as well as light on a summer afternoon, while a north-facing slope gives an even, cooler light all day. Glazing choices follow from that, and we talk them through when we know which way your lounge points.

A bedroom directly over the middle of the lounge means the roof cannot reach that stretch, so the stairwell or hall beside it becomes the place for the glass. Blinds made for roof windows cut summer glare off a television and close the room again after dark.

A flat rooflight over an extension section lights the floor below it, and the line of the old arch or dividing wall is a good guide to where the dim stretch begins.

Getting to you from Maidstone

From Maidstone the road distance to Crowborough is about 25 miles, heading south-west. The B2100 leaves the A26 at Crowborough Cross, heading east towards Lamberhurst. The survey is free, wherever in the town you live.

After the survey you get one fixed written quote that prices the unit, the opening in the roof and the lining of it indoors together.

When the work is finished you receive the paperwork for the job and our 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing. For a survey, WhatsApp us on 07880 284133, write to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, or send your postcode through the form at the foot of the page.

If you are just outside the town, we also cover Royal Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall to the north-east and Mayfield to the south-east.