Where To Install a Skylight On Your Roof For the Best Lighting

When making any improvements or additions to your home, it’s important to consider where you want those improvements to be. In the case of a skylight, you want the space that offers the best lighting, best view, or even best energy efficiency. Because it needs to be facing, well, the sky, it’s a no-brainer that your skylight should be installed on your roof. But where is the best place to add a skylight to your roof? It may vary depending on your house and there may be a few options. Let’s break them down in today’s blog, as well as the reasons to have a skylight installed in the first place.

What Is a Skylight?

A skylight, or a rooflight, is a clear structure like a window installed on the roof or ceiling. It can take up the entire ceiling, but in most residential structures, it is a small transparent structure that allows light to flood down into the room. This can be attractive if you live in an area where it’s easy to see the stars or you want to see the trees overhead. They can also be opened, which allows added ventilation into your home. The aesthetic change may even add value to your home.

Considerations for a Skylight

There are a few things to keep in mind when installing a skylight. Because skylights are an opening installed on the roof, you might have issues with heat loss in the winter and solar heat gain in the summer. Like most openings on your roof, you should take care to have your skylight carefully sealed. Skylights are typically installed on a somewhat raised curb attached to a roof and sealed by watertight flashing to prevent leaks and help boost energy efficiency. Low-e coatings and glazings are also essential to optimizing the energy efficiency of the skylight.

Where To Install a Skylight For the Best Lighting

So once you’ve decided to install a skylight, and you’re already looking forward to the added lighting it will bring to your home. But if you install your skylight in the wrong place, you could be left with an added expense that doesn’t actually offer much light to your home. Make sure you carefully consider the location of your skylight, both in terms of where it will be relative to your roof and where it will be relative to the interior of your home.

Exterior

Take a look at your roof in order to see what’s even feasible in terms of adding skylights. Think, too, of the size skylight you want. For instance, do you want it to take up most of the ceiling or just offer a shaft of natural lighting into the home? Do you have a roof with a number of overhangs or gables or a fairly straightforward roof? Is it steep-sloped or is it low-sloped?

You should also consider the direction of the house. Remember: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Over the course of the day, the sun will move from east to west, so if you want direct sunlight, you want a skylight that faces either east or west. However, in some cases, indirect sunlight can be more appealing. It still offers natural lighting into the home, but it can be less glaring than natural sunlight. In these cases, you’ll want a skylight that faces north or south.

Finally, there’s personal preference to consider. Do you want to look out at a sky full of stars or a canopy of trees? It’s important to find a skylight that faces a view you enjoy and shows enough of that view so you can get the most enjoyment out of it. Beyond that, however, you also have to consider the interior of your home.

Interior

It’s the interior of your home that will enjoy the benefit of the lighting, so you want to be sure that you install the skylight over the correct space. This will require care to ensure that the section of the roof and the room over which you want to install the skylight corresponds. Some of the interior places to install skylights include:

• Bathrooms. Skylights offer natural lighting to interior rooms without compromising the privacy of those rooms, so they’re perfect for rooms such as bathrooms where window installation might otherwise be tricky. They also help to boost the ventilation of these spaces.
• Kitchens. Another room in the house that could use increased ventilation and lighting is the kitchen. Because you spend so much time in the kitchen preparing food and cooking, a skylight can be a great addition.
• Home office. As work from home becomes more and more prevalent, homeowners are installing new home offices or converting other rooms into home offices. Natural lighting will help to boost productivity, making a skylight a wise choice here.
• Loft or converted attic. Your attic holds so much potential. Rather than neglecting it or using it as a place to shove storage, you can turn it into a studio, a game room, a library, or just a loft and added living space. This new space will likely need more lighting, and a skylight over the attic can offer some of the best views.

Regardless of where you choose to install your skylight, you need a great roofing contractor in order to ensure the most seamless installation, as well as offer the best advice about getting the most from your skylight. At Houston Roofing, we offer our customers nothing less than the best, including expert installations and plenty of experience with skylights. Contact us today for more information or to schedule a free estimate to get started on your skylight project.