Brewood skylights & rooflights, fitted and compared

Brewood is a village, and its houses show it. You will find older brick cottages close to the centre, later houses built in the gaps, and farm buildings turned into homes along the lanes. Each of those roofs takes a rooflight differently.

A lantern lifts an extension and floods the middle of a room. A conservation rooflight keeps a slim, dark profile on an old roof. We put the units that suit your house on one quote so you can weigh them.

Barn conversions and farmhouses

Along the lanes around Brewood, former farm buildings have become houses, and many have large roof planes with exposed trusses inside. These roofs invite light, and they raise a different set of questions from a cottage.

A long roof slope can take a row of roof windows set at the same height, which reads as a deliberate pattern from outside and gives even light to a long room. Where a barn has been extended with a flat-roofed link or a glazed kitchen, a flat rooflight or a lantern in that section can light the dark middle of the plan.

Some barns are listed or stand in the grounds of a listed house, and listed building consent is needed before any rooflight goes into a listed building, however generous permitted development is on another house. We ask at the survey whether yours is listed, and the council decides what needs consent.

Extensions behind the village houses

Gardens behind the older Brewood houses are often long, and a single-storey extension across the back is a common way to gain a kitchen and dining room. Such roofs are usually flat or very shallow, which leaves a lantern or a flat rooflight as the two units to weigh.

A lantern adds height inside and throws light into the centre of the room, which helps in a deep plan where the doors are at one end. A flat rooflight is lower, simpler and often quicker to arrange. It suits a narrow extension or a roof with limited depth for a kerb.

Our guide to choosing a roof lantern or a flat rooflight sets the two against each other on the measures that matter in a kitchen, such as heat gain and glare over a worktop, and the page on flat roof rooflight installation covers the kerb and the covering.

Glass for a garden that faces the fields

Houses on the edge of a village often back onto open ground, with long views and little shade. That is good for daylight and harder on a kitchen in July, because a large pane of clear glass over a south-facing room collects a lot of sun.

The glass specification is where the quote earns its detail. In summer a solar control coating holds back much of the heat, and the price is a slightly cooler tint inside. A clear low-emissivity pane keeps the view neutral and holds warmth in winter. Blinds fitted to the rooflight add a second layer of control, and an opening unit lets hot air leave through the roof.

No glass stops a room warming up on a hot day, so the quote describes what each coating does and leaves the choice with you. Our page on solar control rooflight glass goes through the options in more detail.

Brewood falls under South Staffordshire Council for planning, and it is that council which makes the decisions. In Brewood, permitted development lets rooflights and roof windows be fitted in many cases, and our rooflight planning guide spells out the conditions. A listed building still needs its own consent for a rooflight, however those rights read, and a house can be removed from them by the council's Article 4 direction, or by a condition on the planning permission it was built with.

We check your address against what the council publishes and tell you what we find. Any application is for the council to decide, and where one is needed we prepare the drawings that go with it. In a conservation area the council can also make an Article 4 direction, so we look for one when we check the address.