Walk-on rooflight in grey decking at the back of a semi

Barlestone

Skylights and rooflights for a Barlestone miners' village

29.9 road miles south of Derby, a village that housed miners.

Barlestone's lofts and spare rooms now double as offices and bedrooms, and a desk under the slope is a hard place to work. Tell us where you sit.

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Loft rooms put to work as offices and bedrooms

Bedroom with dark bedding below a sash window — A bedroom with dark bedding, where the sash window leaves the far side of the room shaded.

A converted loft bedroom where one small gable window leaves the slope side dim.

What we fit above Barlestone's rooms

Jobs here often start with a VELUX window or another make of roof window; an extension at the back may take a flat roof rooflight, and a hallway with no slope above it a sun tunnel.

A village survey can turn up three situations. A loft room under a pitched roof wants a roof window, sized to the wall or desk beneath it. A single-storey rear addition with a flat roof wants a rooflight that sits on a kerb. And an inside hall or landing that no slope can reach wants a tunnel. We can say which applies once we have looked at the room and the roof together, and the choice is explained in the survey notes, not left to a sales pitch.

The full guide

A desk under the slope: daylight for a Barlestone loft

Working from a loft room changes what you need from a roof window. The glass has to give enough sky to work by without throwing glare onto the screen, and it has to match, or replace, whatever is already in the roof.

At the keyboard
Opening style
Matching the old one
Hinckley's side

Callout 1

Daylight for work without glare

A desk under a sloping ceiling is a common arrangement now, and it is a testing one. Headroom runs out a metre behind your chair, the ceiling tilts toward your shoulder, and a small gable window may be the only daylight. By afternoon you are working with the lamp on, and the room feels shut in.

Above the monitor or off to the side

Window straight over the desk

Brightest light on the worktop
Reflects in the screen
Strong in summer sun

Window beside or behind

Even light, no screen glare
Room for shelves under the slope
Better for a seated view

A roof window helps, but where it goes matters more than how big it is. Straight over a screen, it throws bright sky onto the glass and makes the display hard to read. Beside the desk, or above and slightly behind the person sitting there, it lights the paper and the keyboard and leaves the monitor alone. Your own position at the desk and the angle of the screen decide the best place, which is why the survey begins by sitting where you sit.

Compass direction plays a part as well. A north-facing slope gives an even, cool light that suits screen work. A slope facing south collects sun for most of the day, and heat and glare follow, so tinted or coated glass and a blind are worth planning from the start. East and west slopes fall between those extremes, each catching the sun low at its own end of the day.

Blinds deserve a mention before the glass is chosen. A roof window usually takes a purpose-made blind that runs on side rails and holds the fabric close to the pane, and there are blackout and light-filtering versions. For a bedroom the blackout kind keeps early summer mornings out, and for an office a filtering fabric cuts glare while leaving the room bright. Deciding this at the survey avoids a clash between the blind, the handle and the sill.

Height of the sill off the floor is the last piece. If you want to look out while seated, the glass needs to start lower in the slope. If you only want sky, it can sit higher, which also suits a tight room with furniture against the wall.

Put the window where the sky lands on the paper, not on the screen.

Callout 2

Four kinds of roof window to pick between

Once the position is settled, the next decision is how the window works. The differences show up in daily use, whether you are opening it for air, washing it or reaching it from the desk chair.

A centre-pivot unit turns on a pivot at mid-height of the sash, with the handle at the top of the frame. A top-hung unit hinges along its upper edge and swings out and up, with the handle at the bottom. Our page on centre-pivot or top-hung roof windows goes into each in turn. A fixed pane has no moving parts, which suits a spot you only want light from. An electric opening unit is the one to look at for a window beyond arm's reach, such as one above a stairwell.

If the window will be out of reach, our page on electric opening rooflights explains how a motor and a rain sensor work together, so the pane closes when a shower arrives. The table below sets the four side by side, so the choice can be made with your room in mind.

How each style behaves in the room

Four roof window styles compared by hinge, handle and cleaning.
Style	Hinge	Handle	Wash outside
Centre-pivot	Mid-sash	Top of frame	From inside
Top-hung	Upper edge	Sash bottom	From outside
Fixed pane	None	None	From outside
Electric opening	Either	Remote or switch	Varies by model

Callout 3

Replacing a VELUX without a surprise

If a VELUX or similar window is already in the roof and has failed, the likeliest route is fitting a fresh unit into the opening that exists. That leaves the plastering, the tiles and the rafters as they are, and a single window is a short job.

Start by reading the size code. Take MK04 as an example. Split it and the lettering sets the width while the number sets the height, which tells you what the existing opening was cut to take. A different code might still fit, but could mean altering the opening, and the survey notes will flag that.

On the day, the order of work is simple. Furniture is covered, tiles are lifted around the old frame, the unit is taken out whole and the new one is set level, then flashed so water runs off it. Inside, the lining is trimmed and the reveal tidied. Nothing is left open to the weather overnight.

The job also has a paperwork side. Whatever goes in must meet today's thermal figure. For a roof window that is the window figure of 1.4 W/m²K, so an older single-glazed or early double-glazed unit will be bettered by its successor.

Reading a code off an existing window

Letter at the start: the width of the unit
Digits after it: the height of the unit
Same code as before: usually drops into the opening
Different code: may call for a resized opening
Label unreadable: we measure the frame instead

Callout 4

Planning, the council and Barlestone

Barlestone's planning authority is Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, and its website at hinckley-bosworth.gov.uk is where to confirm the position for a given street.

On a house, adding a rooflight often goes ahead under permitted development, which has conditions. Rather than copy them out, we link them from our planning guide. Flats and listed buildings are the exceptions, plus any street under an Article 4 direction, and in those cases the council is asked before anything else.

Rooms in the roof carry one more rule. Approved Document B counts a roof window as a way out only when the storey it serves is within 4.5 m of the ground, and the opening needs a free area of 0.33 m², with neither side under 450 mm. Single-storey and chalet-style homes can meet that. A house with two full storeys below the loft would need a protected stair rather than a window.

Our part is to handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable, and to fit to current Building Regulations.

A mining family's village, and what its roofs ask for

Barlestone is a village and civil parish in Hinckley and Bosworth, next to its neighbour Osbaston, with about 2,600 residents. It has an unusual place in the coalfield story. Coal miners lived here, but there was never a pit in the village itself. They travelled to the collieries at Bagworth, Coalville and Newbold Heath, and a pit wheel was set up in the late 1980s to honour them.

Past that, what matters for a rooflight is practical. What follows is how a survey deals with the roof shapes a village of this size can present.

A pitched roof over a loft room is the simplest case. The window goes into the slope, and the work is mostly about position, glare and the light well. Where the loft is already a bedroom, the position is chosen for the bed and the view. Where it is an office, for the desk.

A bungalow whose loft is lived in is a close relative of that, and the escape rule from the planning section applies to any bedroom up there.

A flat-roofed extension at the back, whether a kitchen, utility or garden room, calls for a low-profile rooflight or a modest lantern standing on a raised kerb with an upstand. It is the quickest way to bring daylight into a room that is deep from front to back.

The last case is the inside room. A hall or landing with no slope above it cannot take a roof window, but a sun tunnel can pass through the loft and end in a diffuser on the hall ceiling.

Each of these begins in the same way, and the way is deliberately unglamorous: a tape measure, a notebook and a torch pointed at the rafters. Show us where you sit, sleep or cook, and the survey climbs from that spot up to the roof.

Desks, VELUX codes and Barlestone's council

I work from a loft room. Where should the roof window sit relative to my desk?

Off to one side or slightly behind you, so daylight falls across the worktop and not onto the monitor. At the survey one of us sits where you sit, looks at the screen angle and the compass direction of the slope, and marks a position on the ceiling.

My old VELUX label has faded. Can the new unit still match the opening?

Yes. When the code cannot be read, we measure the frame and the opening directly and choose a unit to suit. A tape-measure reading maps back onto the code anyway.

Does a like-for-like roof window swap need anything from the council?

A like-for-like swap is controlled work, so the replacement has to reach the current thermal figure, and it can be self-certified. Cutting a brand-new opening is a different matter and goes through Building Control, with our notification made where it applies.

If there is a fire, can I climb out of the roof window in my loft bedroom?

Only when the storey is within 4.5 m of the ground and the opening is big enough. Single-storey and chalet-style homes can meet that. Where two full floors sit under the loft, the way out is the stair, which has to be protected. Both points are checked at the survey.

Can one roof window light both a desk and the stairs beside it?

Sometimes. If the desk sits near the stairwell and the slope allows a wide enough unit, one window can serve both. Where they are too far apart, two smaller units or a window plus a sun tunnel give better light than one oversized pane. We test both options on the ceiling with tape first.

Which council covers planning for Barlestone?

Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. Our planning guide covers the permitted development conditions for rooflights on houses and points to the government source, and the council can answer questions about one particular road.

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Where do you want the light? Tell us in the form: the worktop, the stair, the desk.

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We cover Derby and 30 miles around.