Skylights & rooflights in Birmingham

Skylight is the word homeowners tend to search for. Rooflight is the word the trade and the manufacturers use. They mean the same thing: glazing set into a roof to bring daylight into the room below. On a Birmingham house the choice usually comes down to four families of product, and the roof you have decides which of them are open to you.

A rooflight is a flat or gently pitched unit that sits on an upstand on a flat roof. It is the usual choice over a kitchen extension, a garage conversion or a rear outrigger, and it can be fixed, opened by hand or driven by a motor. A roof lantern is a framed glass structure with sloping sides that rise to a ridge. It sits on a raised kerb and gives a room a sense of height as well as light. A roof window is set into the slope of a tiled or slated roof, in line with the tiles, and opens on a top hinge or a centre pivot. A sun tunnel is a roof-mounted dome linked by a reflective tube to a round diffuser in the ceiling, which suits a landing, bathroom or hallway where a roof window cannot reach.

Each family has its own page: roof lanterns, flat roof rooflights, roof windows and sun tunnels. If you would rather see them all on one sheet first, our guide to the types of skylight compared side by side sets them out on the same measures.

Start with the roof, not the brochure. A flat roof and a pitched roof take different products, and within each there is a range of choices that change how the room looks and how the unit behaves over the years.

Flat roofs are everywhere in Birmingham: the single-storey kitchen extensions behind Victorian terraces in Moseley and Kings Heath, the garage conversions on interwar estates, and the dormers and rear outriggers that many homes picked up over the decades. On a flat roof you can choose between a flat rooflight, a lantern, a walk-on panel or a sun tunnel, and the deciding questions are the size of the opening, how much height you want inside, and whether the roof covering is new or due for replacement.

A pitched roof narrows the field to roof windows and, where the look matters, conservation-style units. The pitch of the roof and the tile or slate on it decide which flashing kit the window needs. The rafters decide how wide the opening can be before the roof needs extra timber to carry it.

When the roof itself changes the answer

Some roofs need a decision before the glazing can be chosen. A flat roof that has nearly reached the end of its service usually calls for the new rooflight to go in alongside the new covering, so that the upstand and the waterproofing are built as one piece of work. If the room below is a kitchen with a run of wall units, the position of the opening may be set by the ceiling joists rather than by the middle of the room.

On a pitched roof, an older slate roof with thin battens behaves differently from a modern concrete tile roof, and each one needs a flashing kit matched to it. Where a homeowner wants a large opening between rafters that sit close together, the options are two windows side by side, a wider window with the rafters trimmed, or a taller window instead. We put those side by side with what each means for the work. If you are not sure your roof can take one at all, our answer on whether a skylight can go in any roof covers the common limits.

A fixed rooflight lets in the same light as an opening one for less money. You lose the fresh air.

An opening rooflight lets warm air out of a kitchen extension. Many open by hand, with a winding rod or a handle.

An electric rooflight is operated by a wall switch or a handheld remote, which suits a unit that sits out of reach. Many include a rain sensor, and when the weather turns it shuts the unit. The full range sits on our electric and opening rooflights page.

When you replace a whole rooflight or roof window, Part L limits how much heat the new unit may lose. Rooflights and roof windows have different limits.

Triple glazing keeps more heat in. Double glazing costs less and often arrives sooner. Our energy efficient rooflights page goes into coatings and gas fills.

What the numbers mean in a real room

A U-value tells you how much heat passes through a square metre of the whole unit, frame included, for each degree of difference between inside and out. Lower is better. The figures in the table are the most a new unit is allowed to lose; plenty of units beat the limit, and each one's own figure is printed on the quote, which lets you compare like with like.

Glass choice is about more than heat. A south-facing lantern over a kitchen can make the room warm on a bright afternoon, and solar control glass reduces that. Self-cleaning coatings on the outer pane help on a low-pitched roof where rain does less of the work. Laminated inner panes are the norm on many flat units because they hold together if broken. Each of those adds to the price, so we only suggest the ones your room and roof call for.

1. 01

   Read the whole-unit U-value

   Centre-pane figures look better than the frame and glass together. Ask for the whole unit.

2. 02

   Match the glass to the aspect

   Solar control on a sunny pitch, standard glass where the roof faces north.

3. 03

   Weigh triple against time

   Triple is warmer and heavier, and some makers take longer to build it.

1. 01

   Survey

   The opening is measured, the roof build-up is inspected from above and below, and we look into the permission position for your address.

2. 02

   Choose

   Your written quote presents various suitable units, giving the price and lead time alongside the glass, frame and opening of each.

3. 03

   Fit

   We form or adapt the opening, fit the unit and make the roof weathertight around it, then finish the inside.

4. 04

   Sign off

   For notifiable work we notify Building Control, and the completion paperwork is passed to you at the end.

Rooflight installation is building work, so the order matters. The survey comes first because almost every later choice depends on what is found there: how the flat roof is built up, whether the joists can be trimmed where you want the light, which way the roof faces, and how we will reach it safely. On a terrace in Handsworth or Bearwood that can mean access from a rear alley; on a 1970s estate in Solihull or Sutton Coldfield it is often straightforward from the garden.

Once you have chosen, we order the unit from the maker. Lead times are set by each manufacturer, and we write the maker's expected range on the quote, because the maker sets it. Our answer on how long skylights and rooflights take to arrive explains what moves them.

On fitting day the order runs from the outside in: the opening is formed or adapted, the upstand or kerb is built, the unit is fixed and sealed into the roof covering, and then the inside is boarded, plastered and left ready to decorate. Forming a new opening changes the structure of the roof, so it is carried out to the Building Regulations and inspected wherever the chosen route calls for it.

If it is a new opening

Cutting a new hole in a roof changes how the roof carries its load, so the joists or rafters either side are doubled up or trimmed to the maker's sizes. Building Regulations apply, and Building Control is notified before the work starts. Within Birmingham the choice lies between Birmingham City Council's building control service and a registered building control approver, which is the name for private building control since April 2024.

If it is a replacement

Taking out an entire rooflight, frame and glass together, is work on a controlled fitting, which makes it notifiable, and the replacement must also meet the Part L limit. A new sealed glass unit alone, fitted into a frame that is sound, is not notifiable. We tell you which applies to your job before you choose, because it can change both the paperwork and the price.

Skylight replacement usually starts with a unit that has misted between the panes, gone draughty, yellowed with age or stopped opening. The first decision is whether to keep the opening exactly as it is and fit a like for like unit, or to use the work as a chance to change the size, the glass or the way it opens.

On a pitched roof, like for like is often simple. Most roof windows carry a data plate on the frame with a size code. In a VELUX size code like MK04 the letter tells you the width and the figures tell you the height, and other makers have codes of their own that work along similar lines. With that code we can quote replacement units that fit the same opening from VELUX and from other makers, including FAKRO and Keylite, and set them side by side. Our VELUX window page explains the code in more depth.

On a flat roof, older plastic domes and early glass units rarely match a modern size, so the upstand is usually rebuilt to suit the new unit. That is also the moment to compare a better glass specification, an opening unit where the old one was fixed, or a lantern in place of a flat unit. A misted pane in a sound frame may need only a new sealed unit, and how we decide between that and a full replacement is explained on our misted and failed rooflight replacement page.

Many rooflights on houses fall under permitted development, which means no planning application is needed where the unit meets a short set of national conditions. The conditions sit in the General Permitted Development Order, under Class C (Part 1, Schedule 2), and our rooflight planning permission guide gives them in full instead of repeating them on this page.

Permitted development has limits that catch people out. A rooflight on a listed building requires listed building consent, however much permitted development might otherwise allow. It applies to houses, not flats or maisonettes. Even then, a planning condition on an earlier permission, or an Article 4 direction aimed at a particular street or address, can remove it. Birmingham has conservation areas in places such as Moseley, Edgbaston and the Jewellery Quarter, and some conservation areas in England carry Article 4 directions. Being in a conservation area does not on its own take a rooflight out of permitted development, so we check the address rather than assume either way.

The council decides; we check and advise. At the survey we look up the address on the council's planning map, confirm whether the building is listed, and tell you what route the work needs before you choose a unit. Where permission is needed, a conservation rooflight that sits flush in the slates is often the option planners prefer.

Building Control, handled

Notifiable work is notified by us on your behalf, whether that is to Birmingham City Council, to the authority covering the town you live in, or through a registered building control approver. At the end you receive the completion certificate, which a buyer's solicitor may ask for when you sell. Our answer on rooflights and Building Regulations explains what the inspector looks at.

Walk-on and over-stair glass

Glass that people can stand on, or glazing set over a stairwell, brings in safety rules on top of the ones above. A walk-on rooflight is made to a load rating set by the maker for the use you describe, so we ask how the space above will be used before we quote. Units that can be reached from a landing or a balcony are specified with the right safety glass for that position.

Every option on a quote is priced the same way, so the differences between them are real differences in the unit and the work. Size matters most: a unit made to a maker's standard size costs less than one built to measure, and a larger opening means more glass, more timber and more finishing inside. Glass comes next. Then the way it opens, because a motor, a control and a rain sensor all add to the unit and to the electrical work. On a Moseley or Kings Heath terrace with a narrow side passage, how the glass and the scaffold reach the back of the house is part of the survey, and the quote says how we will do it.

Access and the roof itself can change the price more than people expect. A rooflight on a single-storey extension reached from the garden is a different job from a roof window on a three-storey Victorian house in Edgbaston that needs scaffold. A flat roof due for a new covering may be best done at the same time, which adds to this job and saves on a later one. We put those choices on the quote as separate lines so you can see each one.

Each quote is priced for the roof it is on, because the same unit on two roofs is two different jobs. Our costs page explains each part of the price in more depth, and the compare your options page shows how a written quote lays the units side by side.

1. 01

   Measure

   The opening, the roof build-up and the access.

2. 02

   Shortlist

   The units that suit the roof and the room, drawn from several makers if the roof permits.

3. 03

   Price each one

   Unit, fitting, finishing and any notification, line by line.

4. 04

   Set them side by side

   One sheet, same rows, so the trade-offs are plain.