Skylights and rooflights in Cranbrook

Cranbrook was planned from the start as a new community, with the railway station on the Exeter to London Waterloo line, a town centre and housing laid out in phases. Different housebuilders have worked on different parcels, so the streets are not one uniform style. Brick and render fronts sit side by side, terraces run into semis and detached houses, and there are flats in the busier parts near the centre.

The earliest streets are now a good few years old and the newest are still being finished. That gives you homes of quite different ages within a short walk, built to the standards that applied when each phase went up. A house finished recently has a far better insulated roof than one from the first phase, and that changes how deep the opening through the roof has to be.

What you meet is regular, factory-made, and drawn on a plan.

Almost none of it is old stock. You will not meet lath and plaster, cob or thatch here, and there is no old rafter that has settled over two centuries. What you meet is regular, factory-made, and drawn on a plan. That is a real advantage when the opening goes in, because the structure is documented and predictable.

Flats and apartments are part of the mix too, mostly nearer the centre. A top-floor flat can sometimes take a rooflight, but the roof is usually shared and owned by a management company or freeholder, so their consent comes before any design work. Houses are simpler, and the roof is yours to alter once the planning position is clear.

An ordinary detached or semi-detached house will normally have householder rights that cover a rooflight sitting close to the slope. The measurements that matter are 150mm of projection at the most and, for anything facing the side, 1.7m above the floor before it may open with clear glass.

On a new estate there is one extra thing to check. When East Devon District Council granted permission for the original development, it may have attached conditions that remove some permitted development rights from the new houses. Where that has happened, a rooflight that would be routine on an older street needs a planning application. The decision notice for your phase, or the council's planning team, will tell you which applies. Flats and maisonettes never had householder rights to begin with, so any rooflight on a flat needs permission whatever the conditions say.

Heritage designations are rarely the issue on a new estate, so the main question is the planning conditions. If your address is close to one of the older villages nearby, ask the council about the position for that address. The remaining rules are in the Devon guide to planning and building control.

New homes are well suited to rooflights because the roofs are plain and the ceilings are flat. The choice mostly follows the room.

Glazing is chosen for the room and the aspect.

Loft room or landing

A roof window, sized to sit between trusses where the roof allows it, is the normal answer. If you prefer a particular brand, our page on VELUX window installation covers the range and the fitting.

Kitchen extension or garden room

A flat rooflight or roof lantern on an upstand suits a flat roof over the rear addition. Lanterns look best when the inside edge is plastered and decorated to match the kitchen ceiling, which is part of the finish schedule.

Dark bathroom, hallway or stairwell

A sun tunnel brings daylight down through a small round opening and a reflective tube, with no structural work to a truss and very little disturbance to the ceiling below.

Glazing is chosen for the room and the aspect. A south-facing bedroom can take solar control glass, while a landing on the cold side of the house is better served by clear, low-emissivity double glazing. Laminated inner panes are good practice overhead. An opening or electric rooflight adds purge ventilation as well, which suits the airtight, well-insulated homes of recent years.

A few practical points help the choice. A roof window placed too low in a slope gives a wall of glass at knee height, while one placed too high is hard to open without a pole, so we mark the position from inside the room, standing where you will stand. On a house with solar panels, the rooflight has to share the slope with the array and its cabling, which fixes where it can go before the design even begins.

New houses have plasterboard ceilings, and cutting into them is far less fraught than cutting into old plaster. The skill is in the lining. Recent roofs carry thick insulation, so the light well from glass down to ceiling can be much deeper than you would guess from outside.

A straight-sided well of that depth wastes some of the daylight, so where space allows we splay the lining, flaring it out towards the ceiling. It is formed in board, with metal beads at the arrises and the joints taped and skimmed, giving a crisp edge and an opening that belongs to the room. The paint line is cut cleanly, and we leave it either ready to paint or painted, as the schedule states. If your decorator is coming later, ready to paint is the sensible choice.

Dust is managed during the work, the room is protected and the floor is left clean. Ceilings in newer homes are often painted in one coat of matt emulsion, so the edge of the new lining is matched to that sheen and colour rather than left a different white. Every one of these choices is noted in the finish schedule, and the method behind them is explained in our guide to the inside finish.