Skylights and rooflights in Newington, Kent

The utility room that lost its window

A utility room is usually squeezed between the kitchen and the back door, with one small window if it has any. Build a kitchen extension across the back and that window may open into the new room, or be bricked up altogether. The washing machine and the drying rack end up in a space with no daylight. An extension roof is flat or low-pitched, which makes it the natural spot for returning daylight. A flat rooflight over the utility room lights it from straight above. If the extension is large enough to carry one, a lantern over the kitchen end can spill light across the doorway into the utility room as well.

The same goes for the room's other jobs. Sorting washing, hanging coats and wiping muddy boots are all easier in daylight, and the ceiling is the one surface in a utility room that is rarely covered with cupboards. That leaves clear space for an opening above the worktop or above the door line, wherever the joists allow.

Older and newer plans

Terraces and cottages of an earlier date tend to be narrow and deep, with a middle room that borrows what it can from the rooms either side. Later semis and detached houses have wider fronts, yet their halls, landings and cloakrooms often still end up at the centre of the floor plan, away from the outer walls.

A cloakroom under the stairs is the extreme case. It has no outside wall, no room for a window and a staircase on top of it, so daylight there is a matter of the roof two floors up, and a sun tunnel has to be run through the first-floor ceiling space as well. If the route turns out too long for a tube to work, the survey shows it and a plain electric light remains the answer.

A conservatory or porch added to the back of an older cottage brings the reverse problem. The new glazed space is bright, and the old kitchen behind it loses what little light it had. Because the old back wall is now an inside wall, there is nothing to cut through at the side, and the roof above the kitchen itself is the route that remains.

Matching the unit to the roof

The roof above the room picks the product. A flat roof rooflight or a roof lantern belongs on a flat roof, and a roof window sits in the plane of a pitched slope. Where a loft lies between the ceiling and the tiles, a sun tunnel carries the light down through it, and the height of that loft decides whether a rigid tube or a flexible one suits the run.

The loft above the room is where the route is decided. Boards laid for storage have to lift where a tube or a window lining passes, and a cable or pipe crossing the line moves the route a little to one side. We trace those from the hatch before any hole is cut in the ceiling, and put the boarding back round the new lining afterwards. A tube that has to bend round an obstruction passes less light than a straight run, so the shortest clear route is the aim.

Older streets and named areas

Conservation areas in the village include Newington Manor, Newington Church and Newington High Street, so each house is checked against the council's own records. Standing inside one of these areas does not remove permitted development rights for a rooflight by itself. Only an Article 4 direction does, and the Article 4 guide explains how to tell whether one applies. Where an application is needed in an older street, the details carry weight: the type of unit, the direction of the slope and the way it sits among the tiles. If the house itself is listed, a new roof window will almost always need listed building consent, and rooflights on listed buildings sets out what that involves.

An older roof can carry repairs from different periods, so at survey we check the covering and the timbers beneath it before marking any opening.

The landing nobody lights

Upstairs, the landing between the bedroom doors has solid walls either side and no outside wall of its own. Its only daylight is whatever slips under an open door, and the stairwell below swallows the rest. A roof window set into the back slope directly over the stairs drops a patch of sky onto the top step. Where the loft is boarded or the rafters are awkward, a smaller opening for a sun tunnel brings in daylight by another route.

Once rafters are cut for an opening, the Building Regulations apply to the job: the framing round the hole, the energy rating of the glass and the paperwork all come into it; the Building Regulations guide lists what is checked. We handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable. If the landing sits beneath a converted loft, the escape route down the stairs is part of the picture, and that guide covers it.

Why the hall and stairs matter in a village house

Hallways in older houses were often narrow and entered straight from the front door. The stair rises from the hall, and the landing is the point where the stair meets the first floor. Between them they make a vertical shaft of dark air that no side window touches. Fitting a window to the roof above that shaft lights the landing and, on a bright day, spills down the stair and into the hall as well. The window needs to line up with the stairwell void, so we measure from the floor below and mark the ceiling position before anyone goes into the loft. Then the rafters on that slope are checked for spacing, because the gap between them sets the width of unit that goes in without trimming.

Starting with the kitchen extension

The free survey covers whichever room is dull. If that is the back of a kitchen extension, we look at its depth, which way it faces and where the light from the garden doors gives out, and we check the covering, the falls, the line of the joists and what the deck is made of. Those answers settle the size of the opening and the height of the upstand, and they show whether a flat rooflight or a lantern suits the structure.

A fixed written quote follows. It lists the glass, what is done to the roof and how the ceiling is finished. The items that move the figure are the opening size, the roof build-up, the glass, the access and the decoration, and each is written down.

A side gate or a drive makes the carry short, and the scaffold goes up on the garden side where the extension roof is. Inside, we protect the floors between the back door and the room, lay out the work and keep the dust to the one space. Afterwards the scaffold comes down and the garden is cleared.

Once the job is finished you hold our 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing. To book, WhatsApp is 07880 284133 and the address is info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk; the quote form sits at the bottom of the screen.