Murton skylights and rooflights for terraced homes and more

A terraced house is a long strip with its short ends open to the light. The front rooms get the street, the back rooms get the yard or garden, and everything between is lit by borrowed brightness through open doors. Murton grew with its colliery, and its terraces follow that strip pattern, while the same logic applies to any later house with a deep plan.

The room test

Choose a bright day, switch off every light and walk the house. Note where you cannot read a label. That is the list of rooms to consider. Rank it by use: a landing is crossed many times a day, a bathroom is a small space where daylight helps, and a back room that has become a kitchen or a play room is somewhere you sit for hours.

What the roof can reach

A room sitting right under a sloping roof is the easiest to light, since a window in the roof is the shortest route. Second easiest is a room under a loft, which a sun tunnel can serve. A room under another room has no roof to reach, and a rooflight cannot help it. A room in a single-storey back addition, or under a flat roof, gives the most choice.

What the rest of the house tells us

If the stair rises from the front door to a landing at the top, the landing is often under the main roof, with a short run to the slope. That makes it a good first choice. Your own house may differ, which is why we look rather than assume. Tell us the room and we will check what is above it.

Back kitchens and outshuts

A terraced house may have a lower back part, either an original rear wing or a later addition, and its roof can be the easiest to work with. It may be flat, or it may be a low slope with only a thin loft space. A kitchen there is a room you use for hours, so light from above makes a difference to the whole day. We look at whether the roof is a plain slope or a built-up flat roof, because that sets the product.

When the best room is not the obvious one

It is natural to want to light the biggest room, but the biggest is often the one with the most windows already. The small room in the middle, which has none, gains more. A narrow stair landing can feel lifted by a single small unit, because it was starting from so little.

Not every dim room is worth the effort, and not every unit needs the same permission. It helps to settle both at once.

The room that most needs light

In a terrace the answer is the one that is both dark and well used. A landing carries traffic to every bedroom. A bathroom is used first thing and last thing, in the dimmest light of the day. A back room that has become the living space is where you spend the evening. Choose that one first. A rooflight over a spare room that you rarely enter will not change how the house feels.

Houses

If you own a house, a rooflight is generally permitted development within set limits, so you do not apply for planning permission. The limits have exceptions, listed in our planning guide. An Article 4 direction can take the right away, and so can a condition on an earlier planning permission. Durham County Council can tell you if either covers your address. Conservation-area status by itself leaves permitted development for a rooflight on a house unchanged.

Flats

Flats sit outside householder permitted development altogether. Flats here means upstairs and downstairs Tyneside flats, flats cut out of larger houses, and flats in blocks. Planning permission for a flat's new rooflight is granted, or refused, by Durham County Council. What your title or lease says about roof and void ownership, and the other owner's consent, decides who you ask first. Read the clause and speak to the neighbour, then order.

Listed houses

A listed house keeps its permitted development rights on the planning side. Almost any rooflight on it needs listed building consent, and that consent decides what can be fitted.