How Rooflights Can Enhance Your Home All Year Round

Bringing more light into our homes is something most of us strive for. This can be easily achieved with lamps, lighting fixtures, and under-shelf lighting strips, for example. Increasing the natural light in our homes, however, can be more challenging. If you live in the city in a flat one of the easiest ways to increase the natural light is by painting your walls light colours and using clever tricks like mirrors on the wall to reflect any natural light from windows or a balcony.

If you live in a house, however, there are more opportunities to increase the natural light through the installation of rooflights. Depending on the design of your home, there may be multiple locations where you could install rooflights, or there may only be one. In either case, there are several key benefits, in addition to bringing in more natural light, to adding rooflights to your home. Adding rooflights could enhance your home all year round.

More Natural Light

Rooflights can quickly increase the natural light coming into a room, and if placed in the correct location within a room can make a significant difference. Making sure you plan the installation of your rooflights correctly, along with determining the size and style of rooflights is vital to making the most of this addition to your home. Rooflights work particularly well in locations which are naturally dark, such as staircases. Depending on the location of a rooflight, the type of natural light you wish to bring in may vary. If you are looking to install rooflights in a room where you will be looking at screens, such as a TV in the living room or computer in a home office, a rooflight with allows diffused light through to avoid glare and harsh shadows may be better.

Reduced Energy Costs

There are two key ways in which adding rooflights can reduce energy usage and costs for your home. Firstly, with the addition of rooflights, as stated above, the amount of natural light coming into your home is increased. As a result, the amount of artificial light from lamps or light fixtures which is needed can be significantly reduced. Using these artificial light sources less means lower energy uses and therefore lower energy bills. Secondly, rooflights, like all windows, can be a great source of heat. We have all experienced sitting next to a window on a bring sunny day and the heat which can be generated by the glass. Adding rooflights can act in the same way and can increase the temperature of a room depending on their size and placement. As before, this can result in less energy being used to heat a room and therefore, lower energy bills. Also, in colder months, the glass in some rooflights has developed to become an excellent insulator and helps keep heat in rooms.

Increase Ventilation

During summer months, when you need to cool a room down a rooflight can be a great solution. Here in the UK having air-conditioning installed is rare, so we often have to rely on plug-in fans to help circulate air around rooms to cool it down. However, a rooflight can open, sometimes only partially, to provide ventilation for a room and allow hot air to escape. Hot air rises, so in a room such as a kitchen, a rooflight would provide a great solution to cooling the room while cooking, particularly during warm summer months.

Visually Stunning

Rooflights can add a real design feature to a room and can look stunning. While bringing more natural light into a room will naturally enhance its appearance, a rooflight can help add an extra dimension. Just with cleverly placed windows, rooflights can ‘bring the outdoors inside’. Depending on your home’s location, this could be a great view of nature or a visually striking cityscape. In some rooms, rooflights can simply bring shards of light into the room, which can really enhance the feel and appeal of the room. This works particularly well in loft or roof conversions to brighten up a space and make the most out of a room.