29.1 road miles south-east of Derby, north of the River Wreake.
The kitchen is the room that works hardest, and its worktop can sit far from any window. Show us where you chop and pour and we plan the light over it.
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Kitchens with a sloping ceiling take roof windows and VELUX windows, flat-roofed extensions take flat roof rooflights, and a deeper room can suit a roof lantern.
A cook stands at the same few places all day, usually the hob, the sink and the worktop between them. That is where daylight pays back. We start from those places and read the roof above them, rather than picking a product and hunting for somewhere to put it. Where the ceiling is pitched, a roof window in the slope does the work. A flat roof asks for something different, namely a flat rooflight placed over the worktop and its length. And if the room is deep enough to carry one, a lantern gives light from several sides. Each is judged from inside the loft or the roof void before any are recommended.
The full guide
Chopping, pouring and reading a recipe all need good light at the worktop, and a kitchen on the back of a house may have none to spare. This guide follows a roof window or rooflight from the worktop through the fitting, the rules and the finish.
Callout 1
People describe a dark kitchen as a room problem, but the room is rarely dark everywhere. The corner by the window is fine. The stretch of worktop where the board sits, three metres away, is shadowed by the units above it. That stretch is the spot, and it is where a rooflight should aim.
At the survey we stand at the worktop and face the way you face while you cook. Wall units, an extractor hood or a tall fridge may block part of the sky, so we note them. A roof window above a worktop works best when it is placed slightly ahead of where you stand, so your own shadow does not fall across the board. Directly overhead throws the shadow of your head onto your hands.
Height matters too. Wall cupboards, a boiler or a run of pipes may sit between the ceiling and the loft, so the survey also notes what the light well will have to pass. In a kitchen that has been extended, a flat ceiling with joists above is common, and the opening is then planned around the joists.
Think about what you do at the worktop, too. Peeling and slicing need sharp, even light with no hard shadows, while a pan on the hob needs enough brightness to judge colour. A rooflight overhead gives a soft downward light that suits both, which a side window rarely manages once the daylight is more than a few metres away. We make sure the opening is large enough for the length of worktop it has to serve.
Finish makes a difference as well. A white splayed light well bounces daylight down onto a pale worktop, while a dark one swallows part of it. The colour of the worktop itself changes how bright the corner looks, and we say so before any order is placed.
Callout 2
Cooking does not stop for building work, so the disruption of a rooflight job needs planning. The noisier stages take place high up, over the roof and loft, away from the kitchen itself. Before the first slate or tile is lifted, the worktop and units below are covered, and the floor protected. Dust sheets go up under the opening so that falling debris is caught.
On the roof, the covering round the opening is removed and the rafters trimmed. The new frame is fitted and flashed to the covering, and the surrounding area is made weathertight. Then comes the inside work, where the light well is framed, insulated and lined with plasterboard. It is sealed, filled and left for you or your decorator to paint.
The roof stage for one plain unit should take one or two days. The steps below put the whole job in order, and the rest of the time goes into the interior finish. We agree the days with you in advance, and we tell you which room you can use at each stage, so the family can carry on cooking somewhere.
Worktop, units and floor are sheeted before any work above them.
Covering lifted, rafters trimmed and the frame set in place.
Flashing fitted and the glazing sealed against the weather.
Lining built between the opening and the ceiling.
Surfaces finished, rubbish removed, ready for paint.
Callout 3
Asfordby lies in the Melton district of Leicestershire, so planning is for Melton Borough Council. Its website, melton.gov.uk, publishes what applies to a given address. Nothing we hold says a conservation area or Article 4 direction applies to a road here, and guesswork has no place in it. Melton gets a query about your address before we arrive, so you hear its answer before we begin.
On an ordinary house, a roof window or rooflight generally falls inside permitted development. The conditions are in our planning guide, together with links to the official guidance. Flat and maisonette owners must ask first, since householder allowances do not reach them. A listed building will want consent first.
Regulations about the building itself are separate. A new rooflight changes the roof structure, so the work needs approval, from the council itself or from a registered building control approver. Either can take the notification, and sending it is our job where it applies. Table 4.2 in Approved Document L sets the energy figure, depending on whether the unit counts as a roof window or a rooflight, and the spec below lists what we confirm.
Callout 4
What you see from the kitchen is the lower end of the light well, and its finish does more for the room than people expect. The sides are splayed outward so the opening in the ceiling is larger than the one in the roof, and daylight spreads out instead of dropping in a tight patch. White paint on the splay helps, as does keeping the edge crisp.
Inside the well, insulation sits behind the plasterboard to keep the cold roof void apart from the warm kitchen. A kitchen produces steam and cooking moisture, so we think about where condensation could gather, and we line the well so the surfaces stay warm. If the unit opens, steam leaves through it, which helps the room.
Extractor hoods and ductwork are something to plan around. Ducts sometimes run through the same part of the loft the well must pass, and moving a duct is a separate decision. We raise it at the survey, when we can see the pipe route from the hatch.
Every job carries our written 10-year workmanship guarantee, and the quote is a fixed written figure issued after the survey. To arrange the visit, use the survey form and tell us which stretch of worktop is the dark one.
Asfordby sits in the Melton district of Leicestershire, and a little under 3,000 people live in it. It is really a small group of places. Asfordby proper lies north of the River Wreake, with Asfordby Hill to the east and nearer Melton Mowbray, and Asfordby Valley to the north. The village sits on the A6006, to the west of Melton Mowbray.
From 1984 to 1993 a deep coal mine, Asfordby Colliery, was built here, and it closed in 1997 after a run of geological problems. What matters for a rooflight is more practical than historical.
Village houses get altered over time. A kitchen may have been knocked through into a dining room, a rear extension added, or a bungalow roof converted. Each change leaves its own pattern of rafters, joists and ceiling heights. A survey finds out what is actually there.
Extensions can gain the most from a rooflight. A single-storey addition at the back may have a flat or low-pitched roof and a deep floor plan, with the table or worktop furthest from the garden doors. A flat rooflight or a lantern over that part of the room brings the daylight in from above, without losing any wall space.
On a house with a pitched roof and the kitchen in the main building, the issue is different. The ceiling is an upstairs floor, and the loft is above that. A roof window needs a route through the bedroom or landing above, so a sun tunnel is sometimes the sensible answer. We look at both and show you the difference at the survey.
The weather cannot be ignored when the house stands on open ground. Houses on the edges of a village are more exposed to wind and rain on the roof slope, so flashing and fixings are picked with the wind in mind, and the unit is secured to the rafters as the manufacturer specifies.
Start with the worktop, wherever it is, and the rest is arranged around it.
A roof window cannot reach through a bedroom, so the answer may be a sun tunnel, if the route allows, or a rooflight on a lower or rear roof. The first step is to look in the loft above, where we can see whether a tube can pass between the roof and the kitchen ceiling.
A lantern is a small glazed roof raised above the ceiling, so daylight arrives from several sides and the ceiling around the opening stays bright too. It suits a larger room under a flat roof, with the table near its middle. A smaller kitchen with a worktop along one wall is better served by a flat rooflight set over the work area.
Either can work, though doing it first keeps dust away from new units. If the kitchen is already in, we cover the units and floor, and we work from the roof side wherever we can. We discuss the order with you and with your kitchen fitter if you have one.
It depends on the type. Existing homes follow Table 4.2 in Approved Document L, where the bar for a roof window is 1.4 W/m²K, with a Window Energy Rating of B as the other way in, while a rooflight is judged against 2.2 W/m²K. The quote names the unit and its figure, so you can see which category your choice falls into.
Yes, and they help. A picture of the worktop, one of the ceiling above it plus a shot of the whole house from the garden gives us a good first view of the roof. The free survey still comes first, and the fixed written quote follows from what we find on the day.
Where do you want the light? Tell us in the form: the worktop, the stair, the desk.
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