Rooflights and skylights for Pembury homes

The stairwell nobody can see out of

Take a two-storey house with the staircase in the middle of the plan. The flight and the landing above it sit between rooms that have no outer wall of their own, so daylight arrives only when a bedroom door stands open. The roof slope directly over that stairwell is the natural place to fix it. A roof window there lights the top of the stairs and, with the doors open, spills down towards the hall. Because the stairwell is narrow, the width of the opening is set by the rafters above it, and we stand on the landing and look up before we mention a size.

A roof window can also open, and a stairwell is where warm air collects. Letting some of it out through a window at the top is a bonus on a hot afternoon, though we would fit one for the light alone.

Where the loft, a water tank or the pitch gets in the way, a sun tunnel is the other answer: a small dome on the tiles, a tube that runs through the loft, and a diffuser fixed in the ceiling below. The tube needs a clear route, so the loft hatch is the next place we look.

The garden room and the room behind it

Some owners add a garden room onto the back of the house, glazed along the garden side. The new room is bright from the doors inwards. The wall it was built against is now an interior wall, though, and whatever sat behind it, a dining room or a small study, has lost the window that used to face the lawn. Put a flat roof rooflight where the old wall and the new roof meet and the back of the garden room and the original room both gain daylight.

A garden room roof can take a raised lantern too. Planning is the rule that bites there: any lantern set on a flat roof is usually taller than the 150 mm that permitted development allows, so an application is normally needed, and the roof lantern planning guide explains the position. A flat rooflight sits lower, and we price it beside the lantern so you can compare.

The joists of a flat roof run one way, so the opening is set out against them, and joists are trimmed if it needs to be wider than the spacing. We mark the position from inside the room, standing under it, before a size is chosen.

The loft room under the slope

Where the roof space has become a bedroom or study, the slope is the only wall facing the sky. A roof window set into it lights the sloping ceiling from above, and a second on the opposite slope can bring air through. Opening up a roof is building work, and a loft room adds fire and escape questions as well, all set out in our Building Regulations guide.

Loft rooms often start life as a plain rafter or trussed roof with a hatch in the landing ceiling. If yours was converted some years ago, we look at how the old window openings were framed before we plan the new ones, since a roof window tends to sit between existing rafters.

Headroom is the other measurement we take early. Under a low slope the usable floor is a strip down the middle of the room, and a roof window set too high shows only sky once you sit down. We sit and stand where the desk or bed will go and note where the sill would fall, since a desk and a bed want different heights.

Glass, blinds and heat

Each of the three rooms asks for something different from the glass. A stairwell wants daylight and little else, so a plain clear unit does the job. A garden room already has glass on one side, and a south-facing roof adds more sun, so we talk through solar-control glass and blinds before the quote, not after. In a loft room the sloping ceiling sits close to the roof covering, and the energy standard for a replacement or new roof window is one of the points our energy efficient rooflights pages cover.

None of that needs deciding before you call. We ask what the room is used for, at what time of day, and whether the sun reaches it, then match the glass to the answers.

Getting to Pembury

Pembury lies to the south-west of Maidstone and is well within our area. Pembury has no railway station of its own; the nearest are at Tunbridge Wells, High Brooms, Tonbridge and Paddock Wood. The A228 bypass runs through woodland to the north and west of the village and joins Maidstone Road at its northern end.

Which room to start with

If two rooms compete, tell us which one feels darker at ten in the morning. The stairwell is usually the quickest to brighten, because the roof above it is close and the opening can be small. A garden room or a loft room asks for a closer look at the structure.

What moves the price is the size of the opening, the covering the roof has now, how high the scaffold must go, how hard it is to reach the roof, and the glass specification. You receive one fixed written quote that sets all of that out, and, when the job is finished, our written 10-year workmanship guarantee.

What the survey looks at

We start in the room you want lighter and note which way its windows face. Then we go into the loft, if there is one, to see the rafters, the insulation and any wiring or pipework in the way. On the roof itself we check the tiles or the flat covering, the pitch and where an opening could sit between the rafters. Anything we cannot judge from the ground gets looked at properly before a figure is written down. In a Pembury estate house the rear slope is often the better choice for a roof window, since it keeps the front elevation as the street sees it, though the position of the stairs and the rafters has the final say.

Older buildings in the village

Pembury is older than its estates. The Old Church stands in woods outside the village near the waterworks and Kent College, and the school there occupies a Victorian manor house in a 75-acre estate. A house converted from a barn or an office under change-of-use permitted development falls outside the householder rules, so we ask how yours began when you first get in touch.

The quickest way in is WhatsApp on 07880 284133; an email to info@orchardskylightsmaidstone.co.uk works too, and the form sits at the foot of the page. Neighbouring places on our list include Five Oak Green, Southborough and Royal Tunbridge Wells.