Where a rooflight or skylight suits Clifton, Bedfordshire rooms
Clifton is a Bedfordshire village in the valley of the River Ivel, and a residential one, so most of the work is about bringing sky into rooms that look at gardens, fences and trees.
Clifton roofs, old village and family streets
Clifton sits in the valley of the River Ivel, which was once navigable through the village. It appears in the Domesday Book, it was once a centre for straw plaiting, and it is now largely residential. People like it enough that it has been voted Bedfordshire Village of the Year three times, in 2003, 2005 and 2009. A village with that kind of record tends to be kept up, and that includes the roofs.
Two kinds of house matter when you ask what a rooflight can do here: the older ones, shaped by the village's long past, and the family houses that have grown rooms outwards and upwards.
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Older houses in the heart of the village
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Family houses that have grown
A village with Domesday roots and a straw-plaiting past has houses that were built to be lived in and worked in, not to be bright. If yours is one of the older properties, expect small windows, deep ceilings and rooms tucked under the roof slope. An attic bedroom may have one little opening in a gable and nothing else. A conservation rooflight has a slim frame that lies tight to the covering, so the roof keeps its look and the unit suits a house where the roofline matters. A roof window is the plainer choice for a loft that is not on show from the lane.
Because the village is largely residential, the jobs fall into a few familiar kinds: a bigger kitchen, a loft bedroom, a garden room. Each leaves the ground-floor windows facing a fence or a boundary hedge, and each is helped by light from overhead. A flat rooflight suits a flat-roofed extension; a lantern suits a kitchen that needs height as well as brightness; a roof window turns a loft from a store into a room. The sky over a Clifton roof is as open as it ever was, whatever has grown up beyond the back fence.
Two Clifton rooms that want the sky
A back terrace room hemmed in by a fence
Six feet of timber can take half the daylight out of a room.
Sideways
A room built onto the back of a house, with doors out to a terrace, ought to be the brightest in the building. It may not be, because the garden boundary is a close-boarded fence only a few metres from the glass. The doors let in what the fence allows, and the fence allows very little once the sun has moved round.
The room ends up lit by the doors for an hour or two and by bulbs for the rest of the day. The deeper you go into it, the darker it gets, and the table furthest from the glass is the one nobody wants to use.
Widening the doors does not solve this. A fence stays a fence, and a wider opening only gives a larger view of it.
Straight up
The roof is the part of the room that nothing at the garden's edge can reach. A flat rooflight fitted into the extension roof lets in daylight from straight above, so the dim middle of the room is lit as well as the area by the doors. It is built on an insulated upstand with a slight fall to shed water, and the ceiling inside is finished neatly around the opening.
For a long, narrow room, two rooflights in a line spread the light evenly. For a square one, a single larger pane suits it better. A roof lantern goes a step further and gives the ceiling height as well as light.
It all follows from one idea. A side window looks at what is beside you; a rooflight looks at the sky, and straight up is clear.
Fences also change. A boundary that is low today may be raised by a neighbour next year, or a hedge may grow into a screen. A window on the side of a room has to live with all of that, while a rooflight is out of reach of every change at ground level. That is why a decision about light on a family room is best made from the roof down rather than from the doors in.
There is a comfort point worth raising too. Glass above a room can gather summer heat, so the survey talks through glazing choices with you. Our guide to how a rooflight affects the temperature of a room explains the options before you commit to any of them.
Verdict: for a family room on the back of a Clifton house with a fence close outside the glass, one flat rooflight above the middle of the floor gives the most even daylight.
A landing under a tree
The branches stop the side window. They do not reach the roof.
Sideways
A village garden often has a tree older than the house extension beside it. In leaf, it filters the light into the landing window and turns the stairs green and shadowy. In winter it lets more through, but the sun is low and weak, so the landing stays dull.
The result is a stairwell where you switch the light on in the morning, even in good weather. The window is not the wrong size. It is simply looking the wrong way, towards a trunk and a canopy rather than open sky.
Pruning helps for a season and then the tree grows back, and a protected tree cannot be pruned freely at all.
Straight up
A roof window above the landing looks over the branches rather than through them. Overhead, there is a clear path for daylight that the side window never had, and it falls down the stairwell to the hall. A model that opens also lets warm air out of the top of the house in summer.
Before choosing, the rafters, the ceiling, the height of the stairwell and the pitch of the roof above it all get checked. A narrow landing is better with a tall, slim unit than a wide one, and the survey decides which.
The fixed written quote does not change on the day, and the Building Control notification is handled where it is needed, with the installation built to current Building Regulations.
If the roof is a loft conversion or about to become one, the sizing questions are different, and our roof window guide covers them.
Whichever way it goes, a landing is a room people pass through rather than sit in, so the aim is not to make it blazing bright. It is to make the stairs safe and pleasant in daylight without reaching for a switch, and to let the house feel connected from the hall to the top floor. A single well-placed window above the stairs does that more gently than any amount of fitted lighting.
Think, too, about what you see when you look up. A roof window frames a patch of sky, and on a landing that patch changes with the weather and the hour. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of detail that makes people stop on the stairs.
Questions to answer on the landing
- How tall is the stairwell?
- What sits directly above the landing ceiling?
- Does the tree stand in the way in winter too?
- Should the unit open for fresh air?
- Is the house inside the village conservation area?
Clifton planning: Central Bedfordshire Council
Clifton falls under Central Bedfordshire Council for planning, whose planning and building pages are the first stop. The council's conservation and heritage list includes an entry for Clifton, dated March 2004, which you can find through its conservation pages. That means the village has a conservation area, and it is worth asking the council's planning team whether your own street is inside it.
Being in a conservation area does not by itself remove permitted development rights. An Article 4 direction can, and the council can say whether one applies. If the house is listed, the rules are tighter again, and consent is needed for roof changes.
We keep the national permitted development rules in one place, our skylight planning guide, rather than restate them here. Read it before the survey and bring any questions along, and photographs of the dark rooms if you have them.
On the building side, the council's building control page explains the council route; a registered building control approver is the private alternative. Either way, the notification is ours to send wherever the work needs one.
Getting from Milton Keynes to Clifton
Clifton lies 22.9 road miles east of Milton Keynes, a drive of around 32 minutes. The village lies in the Ivel valley, close to the railway station at Arlesey, and its nearest neighbours are Henlow, Shefford and Langford. That makes a survey visit simple to fit into a morning or an afternoon, and the same trip covers any of those places.
For the fitting itself, the fitting of a single rooflight or roof window takes one or two days. The inside is finished and the roof sealed before we leave, which means the room can be used straight away. If you would like to talk it over first, WhatsApp us on 07880 284133 or email info@vertexskylightsmiltonkeynes.co.uk.
Residential work comes first, and the same care goes into every job, however small the opening. A small commercial project, such as a village hall extension or a workshop, is also welcome.
What the Clifton survey covers
A survey is free, and it begins in whichever room feels dimmest. We stand where you stand, look up and ask what the roof above can take. We measure the ceiling, check the rafter spacing, look into the roof void if there is one and note the pitch. Then we go outside and look at the covering, the ridge and the places where flashing will have to run.
On an older house, we spend longer on the roof structure, because it may not follow a standard pattern, and we think about how the finished unit looks from the lane. On a family house with an extension, the survey looks at the flat roof, its fall and its edge, and decides between a flat rooflight and a lantern from the shape of the room.
Everything we find goes into a fixed written quote that does not change on the day. The work carries a 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing. If you are comparing glazing, our guide to energy-efficient rooflights explains the figures in Part L, Table 4.2: 1.4 W/m²K or WER band B for roof windows, and 2.2 W/m²K for rooflights.
We install and replace. If a unit has already failed, our guide to misted rooflights explains what has happened to the glass.
Clifton, Bedfordshire: your questions
Does Clifton have a conservation area?
Yes, the council has one on its list for Clifton, dated March 2004. To find out whether your property is inside it, ask the council's planning team. A conservation area does not by itself remove permitted development, though an Article 4 direction can. See our planning guide.
Which council deals with planning in Clifton?
That is Central Bedfordshire Council, and the planning and building pages cover applications and building control.
How long does it take to get to Clifton from Milton Keynes?
The village is 22.9 road miles to the east, and the drive takes about 32 minutes. Surveys are free, wherever you are in the village.
Will a tree stop a rooflight working?
A tree beside the house blocks a side window, but a rooflight takes light from overhead, so branches at the side have far less effect. A branch that overhangs the roof itself is worth discussing at the survey, as it can drop leaves on the glass. We look at it when we measure up.
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