Rooflights and skylights in Stansted Mountfitchet

These roofs were built by hand rather than to a factory truss pattern, so the timbers under the tiles do not always sit at even, predictable spacings, and a bay near a chimney breast or a party wall can be narrower than the one next to it. Getting an accurate reading of that spacing on site, not from a general assumption about houses of this age, is the first job on every quote. Where a loft is becoming a bedroom or a study, that reading decides how a roof window sits in the rear slope and how wide it can realistically be.

Rear extensions on these older plots tend to be modest in footprint, which makes the light doing double duty in a kitchen or dining space matter more, not less. A single well-placed rooflight over a table or an island can lift a room that would otherwise rely on one small window and whatever comes through the back door. Where the roof pitch and the room below both allow it, a roof lantern gives a strong, architectural line to a rear extension on one of these older plots; where the ceiling is flatter, a flush flat rooflight does the same job without adding height to the roofline.

• Rafter spacing checked on site before any product is drawn in.
• Loft conversions specified around the rear slope, not the street-facing one.
• Extension roofs matched to a lantern or a flat rooflight depending on the ceiling below.

Standard double glazing already cuts a good deal of airborne noise simply by virtue of the air gap between panes. Where a bedroom or a home office sits directly under the busier part of the flight path, an acoustic laminated pane, with a soft interlayer bonded between two sheets of glass, reduces noise transmission further than standard glazing of the same thickness, without changing how the room looks from below. It is a specification choice rather than a separate product, and one we discuss where it genuinely applies rather than adding it to every quote as a matter of course.

Ventilation is worth thinking through alongside it. A trickle vent or an opening light lets a room breathe on a warm day, and that same opening is the one route noise takes that fixed glass does not. Where quiet matters most, a fixed rooflight with acoustic glass paired with separate background ventilation elsewhere in the room can do better than a single opening unit trying to do both jobs at once. It is one option among several, set out in the light plan alongside the others, not a rule that applies to every roof in the village.

A single-storey rear extension, whatever its age, usually calls for either a roof lantern or a flat rooflight, chosen by the shape of the ceiling below and how much architectural presence the homeowner wants the roof to have. A loft conversion calls for one or more roof windows set into the rafters, sized for the room they serve and positioned with the pitch and headroom in mind. An internal room with no roof or wall to draw daylight from at all, a landing, a hallway, an internal bathroom, is usually better served by a sun tunnel than by any attempt to cut a full-sized opening into a space that was never meant to have one.

Two other situations come up in the village too. Where a flat roof over a garage conversion or a side return is also walked on, a route to the garden or a spot to stand out a ladder, a walk-on rooflight lets that roof carry both jobs safely. And wherever a rooflight sits too high or too awkward for a hand pole to reach comfortably, an electric opening rooflight gives control from a switch or a remote instead. Neither is the reason a household first gets in touch, but both are worth raising once the survey is under way.

Haze between two panes is a sign the sealed unit has broken down: the inert gas that once filled the cavity has leaked away and taken much of the insulating value with it, a change that only moves in one direction over time. In a pitched roof, swapping the unit is usually possible using the depth of flashing already there, so plaster around the opening stays as it was. On a flat roof carrying an old plastic dome or a single-glazed lantern, going up to a modern double or triple glazed unit set on a properly insulated kerb is more work, but it is the option that actually fixes a room that has never felt warm underneath its glazing.

Our page on misted and failed rooflight replacement goes through how that work proceeds. Estates from the 1990s onward are now reaching the point where original seals start to fail, and renewing the unit is a tidy way to bring a loft conversion's insulation up to a current standard without opening up anything else in the room.

Will aircraft noise mean I need special glass?

Not automatically, and it depends on the room and where it sits under the flight path. Standard double glazing already reduces airborne noise; an acoustic laminated pane goes further where a bedroom or office needs it. We discuss it at survey stage rather than adding it to every quote.

Do I need planning permission for a rooflight on my house?

A roof that stays within the height limits and uses obscure glass on any side-facing slope generally qualifies as permitted development under Class C. Permitted development rights can be reduced on some properties, so we confirm the position for your address before ordering.

My loft roof has trusses. Can a roof window still go in?

In practice, yes: the window fits within an existing gap between two trusses without altering the structure at all. Where the room genuinely needs a position that crosses a truss instead, an engineer sets out how to strengthen it. We confirm which applies to your roof before a product is chosen.

Can you replace a cloudy old skylight without redoing the whole ceiling?

In a typical roof window opening, yes: a current unit generally fits the existing flashing depth, so the plaster lining around it is left undisturbed. A flat-roofed dome moving up to a modern insulated rooflight is a slightly bigger job but still contained to the opening itself.