Rooflights and skylights fitted in Marston Green

A bungalow roof has room under the slope for a loft room, and a roof window is how that room gets its daylight. A flat rooflight lights a flat-roofed extension from above, and a lantern gives the same extension some height.

Your written quote sets out whichever of these suit the roof, with the glass, the frame and the opening type of each, so you can weigh the trade-offs yourself.

Flat-roofed extensions behind the semis

A semi in the village may have a single-storey extension at the back, often a kitchen or a dining area with a flat roof. The roof may be due for a new covering, and that is the most economical moment to add a rooflight, because the opening, the upstand and the covering are all done together. We can quote the rooflight to suit your roofer's covering, or price the whole roof as one job if you would rather have a single contract.

Sizing starts from the room below. A long, narrow kitchen suits a long flat rooflight or a pair of smaller ones, and a squarer dining space can carry a pyramid lantern as its centrepiece. The quote draws each option at the size that suits the room, so you see what you are choosing before you commit.

A flat rooflight is the lighter-touch choice, and a lantern lifts the ceiling and lets light in from every side. Our guide to a lantern or a flat rooflight weighs the two for a given room.

Tiled roofs and the flashing kit

Where a semi or bungalow has a tiled slope, a roof window in it needs a flashing kit made for that tile profile. The kit forms the watertight edge, so the match between kit and covering matters as much as the window itself.

We look at the tile type, the rafter spacing and the batten gauge before we suggest a size. A window that fits between the rafters needs no structural change, while a wider one means trimming a rafter, and the quote says which each option needs.

Our page on flashing kits for roof windows shows how the kits differ.

Hallways, landings and bathrooms

A semi often has a dark hall or landing in the middle of the house with no outside wall to put a window in. A sun tunnel is a small tube that carries daylight from the roof down through the loft to a ceiling diffuser, and it needs far less structural work than a full roof window.

For a bathroom under the roof, an opening roof window gives light and a way to clear steam. Our page on sun tunnels for a hallway compares them with a window for a dark space.

Solihull decides, and we check first

Marston Green falls within Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, which decides planning applications for the village. Without an application, many rooflights and roof windows can still be fitted where permitted development applies, though the conditions in our rooflight planning guide must be met.

Where the house is listed, the council's listed building consent is needed for the rooflight, whatever permitted development allows. On other houses, an Article 4 direction may have withdrawn the right, as may a condition imposed when the house was approved. At the survey we look up your address, and anything unclear is settled by the council.

If an application is needed, we supply the drawings and the unit details it asks for. A roof slope that faces the road is where a council is most likely to take an interest, so the survey looks at which slope you are planning to use.

A fresh opening cut in the roof counts as building work under the Building Regulations, and a complete rooflight replacement, frame and glass alike, is notifiable too, as a controlled fitting. Changing just the sealed glass unit does not count as notifiable.

Notifiable work comes with a Building Control notification, which we deal with for you. New rooflights must meet the 2021 Part L limits for existing dwellings: 2.2 W/m²K is the value that applies to a rooflight, while a roof window follows the limit that covers windows generally.