Skylight and rooflight fitting in Mayfield, East Sussex

The hall and landing in a centre-stair plan

In a house arranged like that, the hall borrows light from the front door and perhaps a fanlight above it. The landing upstairs usually has no outside wall at all, so with the bedroom doors closed it can be gloomy at noon. A roof window set into the pitch directly over the stairwell, where the angle of the roof and the rafters allow, sends daylight straight down an open stair. A landing needs less glass than a living room, since it is a place to pass through. Where the stairs are enclosed, or the loft is in the way, a sun tunnel can run from the roof through the roof space to a diffuser in the landing ceiling.

A hallway on the ground floor is a harder case, because there is a floor in between. The landing sits just under the loft, but the hall sits beneath the landing and the bedrooms. If the stairwell is open from hall to landing, light from the unit above can drop down to the hall. If it is boxed in, the hall may need to be treated as its own problem, and at the survey we look at what lies above it before saying which route is realistic. A tunnel can be rigid or flexible, and the length of the run and the number of bends decide which suits; the rigid or flexible guide goes through the difference.

Rooms made in the roof

A house of this kind may have had the loft turned into a bedroom or a study. The ceiling follows the rafters, the headroom is greatest at the ridge and the one window is often at the gable end. Light from that window reaches the end of the room and thins out towards the eaves. Two or three roof windows spaced along the room light the sloping ceiling and the floor beneath it. Where they sit in relation to the bed, the desk and your eye line is something we mark out in the room itself, with the tape and a pencil, before any quote is written.

A roof window that opens also gives a loft room a way to clear warm air and the damp that gathers under a sloping ceiling, which a fixed unit cannot do. Light from a roof window lands on the sloping ceiling first and spreads from there, so a pale ceiling finish makes the same window feel brighter. An electric opening rooflight answers the case of a window set too high to reach from the floor.

Where the loft sits over a house of two storeys, escape and the staircase come into the design, and our Building Regulations guide covers them. They are best settled before the loft work is drawn up.

Position along the slope matters as much as the number of units. A window set low in the pitch gives a view out from a bed or a chair, while one set higher lets light travel further across the ceiling. For a study the glare on a screen decides it, and for a bedroom the question is usually where the morning sun falls. We check which way the slope faces on the day, and we talk through the trade-offs with you in the room before a size is chosen.

What sits between roof and ceiling

For a landing or hall in a house that has been extended sideways or upwards over the years, we look at what lies between the roof covering and the ceiling below. A deep roof void, an old water tank or a run of pipework changes which product is practical and how much has to be moved first. In a house with a flat-roofed addition at the back, the flat section often offers the simplest place for a unit over a room that lost its window to the extension. On a pitched roof of clay tiles or slate, the covering around the opening is cut and flashed back in, and the flashing is the part that keeps the rain out. A deep roof void gives more room to splay the lining, and a shallow one means the light well is short and the opening inside the room is close to the size of the opening in the roof.

A conservation area and a listed landmark

Part of the village lies in the Mayfield and Coggins Mill Conservation Area. If your house is inside a conservation area, that does not by itself take away the permitted development rights for a rooflight; only an Article 4 direction does, and our Article 4 guide explains how to tell whether one applies. The boundaries are drawn on the council's maps, so we check your address against Wealden's records.

The village's best-known landmark, Argos Hill Windmill, is a grade II* listed building. A listed house is a different matter from one that merely stands in a conservation area: a new or altered roof window will almost always need listed building consent. If your house is listed, or you are unsure, the page on rooflights on listed buildings is the place to start. We ask about listing before we talk about products at all.

Converted buildings

Mayfield has converted buildings of its own, including the old station, now a private house. Whether a converted building keeps the householder rights an ordinary house has depends on how it was converted, which the planning guide also covers. We ask how a property started life before we discuss rooflights for it. A house created out of farm buildings or business premises under change-of-use permitted development follows different rules from one built as a house, and finding that out early saves a wasted design. If the property has had its own planning permission with conditions attached, those conditions are worth reading too, because some remove rights that would otherwise apply. Roof space in a converted building varies from one conversion to the next, so its height and depth are measured before a tunnel or a window is chosen.

Getting to you from Maidstone

Mayfield lies about 27 miles south-west of Maidstone, so it falls within our 30-mile radius. The first visit is free and carries no obligation. Afterwards you receive one written quote with a fixed figure for the product, glazing, roof work and finish inside, and a 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing once the work is done. Because the village is some way from the main Kent towns, we plan the day so the crew arrives with everything needed for the opening, the flashing set and the lining, and no return trip for a missing part.

It helps to tell us which room is the dim one, whether the house has a loft you can get into, and whether anything on the roof (a chimney, a satellite dish, an old aerial) is likely to be in the way. If you already know the age of the house, or whether the loft has ever been boarded or insulated, mention that as well, since it shapes what we bring to the survey and which questions we ask first.

We cover Wadhurst, Crowborough and Burwash too. WhatsApp is on 07880 284133, the email address is info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk, and the quote form sits just below.