Willenhall skylights and rooflights, fitted and compared

A terraced house often has a landing, a hallway or an inner bathroom with no outside wall at all. Where a sun tunnel brings daylight along a tube from a small roof dome, a roof window instead needs enough clear rafter bay to take a full pane.

For the room in question the quote lists every suitable unit and writes out its opening type, frame and glass, which keeps the choice with you.

Lofts in the semis

The interwar and post-war semis around Short Heath and New Invention usually have a pitched roof with a clear roof void, and many have a loft that is only used for storage. A roof window turns it into a room that is lit and ventilated, provided the headroom, the floor and the stair work.

Before we suggest window sizes we look at where the stair will arrive and where the ridge sits, because a roof window works best where you stand, not above a sloping ceiling too low to use. If the roof is hipped, the floor area changes, and the window positions follow the plan rather than the other way round.

Where the house has two storeys, a loft room is left by the stair, because a roof window sits too high to serve as the way out. That means a protected stair, and the quote spells this out so nothing comes as a surprise. Our page on loft conversion roof windows goes through the sizes.

A long kitchen with one source of light

The kitchen in a long back range is usually the darkest room that people actually spend time in. A flat rooflight above the worktop lights the cooking end, while a lantern over the table gives the dining end height and a bright centre. A slim kitchen can take both, one at each end, if the roof structure allows.

Glass choice matters more in a south-facing kitchen than a north-facing one. Summer heat through the pane is cut by a solar control coating, while clear glass keeps the most light on a grey day. The quote shows both, and the survey notes which way the roof faces.

Both units sit on a kerb that lifts the glass clear of standing water. A low or cracked existing kerb is flagged on the quote, along with the price of raising it, so that the new covering can be lapped up against it properly. Our page on flat rooflight upstands explains the heights.

Planning applications in Willenhall are decided by Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council. Plenty of rooflights and roof windows are fitted using permitted development, within the limits described in our rooflight planning guide. On a listed house the council must give listed building consent before a rooflight is fitted, even where permitted development would apply, and that right can also be withdrawn from a particular house, whether by a condition on an earlier consent or through the council making an Article 4 direction.

If your address lies inside a conservation area, the council's own records show it, and we look the address up before we suggest a unit. When the front slope is affected, expect a slim conservation rooflight to be among the options we quote, and read about the finishes on our conservation rooflight installation page. The council decides; we advise and prepare the drawings if an application is needed.