Are you planning a renovation? It’s an exciting time with all the opportunities for creative changes to your home. One excellent idea that many homeowners often overlook is adding a skylight in a room or hallway, where it’s structurally possible.
Skylights offer many excellent benefits, including increased natural lighting, boosting your health, and increasing the aesthetics of a room. When planning your renovation, consider discussing the possibility with your builder or project manager to see how it would work into your new space.
This article will examine 5 reasons you should consider a skylight for your renovation. We’ll also evaluate a few of the main negative things to consider in regards to skylights, so you can have the complete picture before deciding. Read on to learn all you need to know about having a skylight installed during your renovation.
1. Increase your access to natural lighting
One of the primary benefits of a skylight is the increase in natural lighting in the room or hallway where it’s located. It will allow you to depend less on artificial lighting, potentially saving you more on your energy bills but the main benefit being the functionality and aesthetics of increased natural lighting.
Additionally, natural lighting can create an entirely different mood and ambience than artificial lighting. You can bring out various features of your room with sunlight that light from a lamp or pendant light simply cannot achieve.
You’ll also have access to using different colour schemes that artificial lights do not blend well with. For example, darker colours tend to make a room look smaller without natural light. With a skylight, you’ll have the option to use these hues, maximising your choices.
If you’re renovating your bathroom, a skylight is an excellent idea for another essential factor—mould growth. This health hazard loves a dark, damp place. With a skylight, you’ll have light for most of the day, decreasing the possibility of mould growth.
2. Added ventilation, heating, and cooling
Skylights are also highly versatile features. Some skylights are more than just a window, they have the functionality to open and close, allowing fresh air to enter your home and stale or moist air to exit. When you need to refresh the air in a room with a skylight, you can open it for a few minutes to allow ventilation, circulating new air into the space.
You can also choose to have a skylight installed with a blind. For those hot days when the sun beats through the glass and heats the room, closing the blinds will prevent the temperature from rising. Alternatively, on colder days, you can allow the sunlight to enter to heat the space.
Another benefit of a bathroom skylight is using the fixture for ventilation following a shower. Allowing the steam to exit the room will help prevent mould and mildew growth. It can also prevent other effects of exposure to excess moisture.
3. Decreased strain on your eyesight
The added light from a skylight is an excellent solution to reducing strain on your eyesight. Artificial lights are not always sufficient for meeting people’s needs when seeing indoors. Natural light is often brighter, allowing more visibility.
4. Improved mental health and decreased stress
Settings with increased natural light are linked to decreased stress in those working in them, while darker environments or a lot of harsh artificial light, have been demonstrated to cause reduced motivation and increased stress.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is also linked to insufficient exposure to natural light. This is more profound in the winter when affected individuals are less likely to go outside and be exposed to sunlight.
Having a skylight installed in your home could benefit your mental health. The added sunlight could reduce your stress levels and risk of SAD symptoms.
5. Boosted resale value
Because of the benefits of skylights, adding one or more to your home during a renovation can increase your home’s resale value. Buyers will be more likely to make an offer on a house with a skylight already installed than one with the potential to add one, as a majority of prospective buyers are interested in buying a turnkey property than they are one they have to complete renovations on. If you’re renovating an attic, a skylight could be a great investment to make the space more liveable by increasing ventilation and natural light in an otherwise dark room.
Additionally, with the possibility of saving money on energy bills and having increased aesthetic value from the skylights, they’ll view them as a significant benefit, with the added wow factor that a lot of properties lack.
The cons of skylights
As with all good things, there are some negative aspects. Truthfully, it comes down to the quality of your installation and the value of the materials you purchase. Cutting corners to save money is never the answer. You’ll want to watch out for the following when selecting your skylights:
- Unskilled contractors who are not experienced with skylight installations
- Poor quality skylights that are not backed by solid warranties
- Completing a DIY installation
- Choosing the location of your skylight without consulting a professional
You’ll also want to consider the cost of repairs or replacement should you get a subpar installation. If you make any of the above mistakes when choosing to have a skylight installed, some significant drawbacks could occur.
A poor installation could result in air leaks. This means you’ll lose heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. An improper placement can result in the room receiving significantly too much sunlight at peak times during the day, causing excess heat to build up. This will result in increased cooling costs, raising your energy bills.Perhaps one of the main concerns is a skylight that isn’t water tight at the edges. This poses a significant risk of damage for your home, if there is potential for a leak where the skylight is installed.
Don’t settle for less with your renovation
When planning your renovation, go for the gold with a skylight installation. Make the most of your space by letting in as much natural lighting as possible. With a proper installation by a trained, skilled professional, you’ll save money on your energy bills and boost your home’s aesthetic. Not to mention, you’ll likely experience significant health benefits. Don’t settle for a run-of-the-mill renovation when you can have stunning results. Normally in Australia, a skylight is installed by the supplier of the skylight, often they are roofers. Once the skylight is installed, a plasterer like Paul will work on the internal area where the skylight was installed, to make it look picture perfect and like it was always there.
