Skylight and rooflight fitting in Halfway Houses

The kitchen extension

A kitchen added to the back of a house gets its own glazing, usually in the garden wall. The trouble sits behind it. The room that used to open onto the garden now opens onto the extension, and its window either looks into a different room or has been bricked up. A flat rooflight placed over the join between old and new walls lights both rooms together. Where the extension roof is pitched, the equivalent is a roof window let into that slope.

For a kitchen of generous size, a roof lantern is the other choice. A lantern is a rooflight on a kerb, so it stands up from the roof. Conditions for each type of unit are laid out in our planning guide.

Fixed or opening

Some units are fixed shut and some open. A fixed rooflight suits a dining room or a hall, where the only aim is daylight. In a kitchen the heat and steam of cooking make an opening unit useful, and in a bathroom the same is true. An opening rooflight can be hand-operated with a pole or driven by a motor, and where the unit sits out of reach a motor is the sensible choice. A pole opener hangs where a hand can reach it, and a motor-driven unit opens from a wall switch or a remote. Our guide to the electric opening rooflight range covers the wiring and controls.

Glass matters too. The glazing in a south-facing kitchen roof may call for a coating to control sun, whereas the same specification over a north-facing bathroom would only dim the room. We choose from the orientation of the roof and the use of the room.

The bathroom

Daylight in a bathroom needs a different kind of opening from daylight in a kitchen: smaller, often obscured, and set where nobody can look in. A sun tunnel in a bathroom carries light from a small dome on the roof down a tube to a diffuser in the ceiling, and it disturbs very little of the roof structure. The diffuser sits in the ceiling, takes up no more room than a light fitting and can be wiped clean from below. If the bathroom sits directly under the slope, a roof window in obscure glass is another route, and an opening version helps clear steam. Obscured glazing in a roof window keeps the room private, and the diffuser on a sun tunnel does the same, since nobody can see through it from outside.

A bathroom upstairs in a two-storey house usually has the loft directly above it, with a short run of tube between roof and ceiling. A ground-floor bathroom in a bungalow is easier still, because the roof is close and the tube is shorter. We measure that distance in the loft before choosing a tube or a window.

The dining room

The dining room at the centre of a plan has the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. Its light comes in through the doorways. When the kitchen is extended, the dining room keeps its own roof above it and loses the side window it once had. A rooflight on the nearest flat roof, or a sun tunnel if the roof is pitched, puts a patch of sky directly above the table. The light well can be splayed so the daylight spreads across the table, and a pale finish carries it to the walls. The unit goes over the side of the room where the table stands, so the light falls on the people sitting at it. Because nothing stands between that opening and the room, a sideboard or dresser against the wall costs the room no light, which is not true of a new side window.

Short winter afternoons show the problem most clearly. A room that depends on doorways alone has nothing left to catch the low light, and the lamps come on at three.

What sits above each room

The roof over these rooms decides the unit. A flat roof on joists takes a rooflight or lantern on an upstand. A pitched roof on rafters takes a roof window between them. A pitched roof framed with factory-made trusses leaves less room for the opening to move, because the web members of a truss are not simply cut. Our guide to upstands and kerbs covers what a flat roof needs before a unit goes on.

Building Regulations and the energy limits

Opening up a roof counts as building work. The structure that has been cut must be made good, the new glass must meet an energy limit and, in some rooms, fire and escape come into it. A new or replacement roof window takes the window limit of 1.4 W/m²K, or Window Energy Rating band B at least. A rooflight or roof lantern takes 2.2 W/m²K. Our Building Regulations guide explains how those limits are applied.

We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and the council or a registered building control approver signs it off. A bungalow or chalet bungalow can use a roof window as the escape for a room in the roof, inside the height rules. The size limits are in the Building Regulations guide.

What goes into the price

No two rooflight jobs cost the same, because the cost depends on what lies beneath the unit as much as on the unit itself. A quote for a job in the village starts from the survey: the opening, the roof it goes through and the room below.

Replacing an old unit in the roof raises its own questions about the kerb, the flashing and the age of the surrounding covering, and we price those separately from a brand-new opening. Mention an existing unit when you message us.

Working around a finished house

A room you already live in needs protecting. Floors are covered from the front door to the work area, furniture under the opening is moved or wrapped, and dust is kept to the room being worked on. Where the opening is cut through a finished ceiling, the plasterboard is trimmed to a clean edge and the reveals are lined with boards ready for decorating. On a flat roof, the old covering is cut back, the upstand is formed and the new unit is sealed and flashed, with the aim of leaving the opening closed to the weather at the end of the day.

If scaffolding or a working platform is needed, it is written into the quote with the rest of the access arrangements. Tell us about gates, side passages and parking when you message, because they decide how materials reach the roof.

A tidy loft helps. Boxes stored beneath the opening are moved before we start, and the hatch is kept clear so materials can pass through.

Getting started from Halfway Houses

The free survey is booked by WhatsApp on 07880 284133 with a couple of pictures of the dim room, or through the quote form. The written quote that follows is a fixed one, and the 10-year workmanship guarantee comes in writing with the finished job.

Queenborough, Sheerness and Minster-on-Sea are close by.