Skylights & rooflights in Coleshill
Light for Coleshill's older rooms and newer lofts.
Coleshill grew around its medieval church on a ridge between the Cole and the Blythe, so a single street can hold old tile, later slate and the flat extension roofs of the last few decades.
- North Warwickshire Borough Council
- Market town survey visits
- Motorway-side, quick to reach
A ridge town between two rivers, older than its roofs
Coleshill is a market town 12.7 road miles north-west of central Coventry, and it started life long before the roofs we fit into today. The facts about the place begin with hut circles, a Romano-British settlement at Grimstock Hill and a royal manor recorded in the Domesday Book, and the medieval town then grew up around the church. That history tells us one useful thing for a rooflight survey: the centre is old, and old buildings rarely have regular roofs.
The town sits on a ridge between the River Cole and the River Blythe, which meet to the north with the River Tame. Homes on a ridge are often exposed to wind and weather from more than one side, so we look hard at how a roof is fixed and flashed before choosing a unit for it. A rooflight that sits well on a sheltered roof still has to sit well on a windy one.
Beyond the old core, a town of this size is made up of the house types you would expect to find around any market town: terraces and cottages close to the centre, semi-detached homes from later building, and extensions added to the back of both. We do not need a street plan to know what that means for the roof. Some roofs will be steep with a deep loft, some will be shallow, and a good many will have a flat-roofed kitchen or utility room added behind.
Coleshill also borders the suburban village of Kingshurst to the west, so the town edge runs into a very different kind of housing within a short walk. Whichever side of that line you live on, the starting point is the same. We measure the roof structure, check the room below and quote for a rooflight that suits both, finished with a splayed and plastered reveal wherever the depth of the roof allows it.
The road network around the town shapes who lives here and what they have done to their homes. Coleshill is close to the M6, the M6 Toll and the M42, with Junction 4 of the M6 on its doorstep, and Coleshill Parkway station opened in 2007 with a half-hourly service. Homes within easy reach of a motorway and a station suit people who commute, and a household that expects to stay will often invest in the loft, the kitchen or the rear of the house. Those are exactly the places a rooflight earns its keep.
That is also why the survey matters more than the catalogue. Two houses on the same road can have different roof coverings, different loft heights and different ceilings below, so we write each quote from what we measure on the day.
Cottages, semis and extensions around the Coleshill ridge
Coleshill's older cottages, later semis and rear extensions point to different units. Match the product to the roof you have, then to the room beneath it.
- Roof windowsFor a loft room or landing in a pitched roof, a roof window set between the rafters brings daylight into the middle of the house.
- Flat roof rooflightsA kitchen or utility room extension at the back usually has a flat roof, which suits a flat glass rooflight.
- Conservation rooflightsWhere a roof is old tile or slate near the church end of town, a low conservation rooflight keeps the roof outline calm.
- Sun tunnelsA hallway or landing with no outside wall gets its light from a sun tunnel running up through the loft.
Also fitted here
Near Coleshill
- Kingshurst6 min
- Smith's Wood6 min
- Chelmsley Wood6 min
- Water Orton5 min
Drive times from Coleshill town centre.
House, flat or listed: the question we ask first
Planning decisions in Coleshill rest with North Warwickshire Borough Council. Nothing in the facts we hold names a conservation area for the town, so each quote starts with a look at whether your street falls inside one. Where an Article 4 direction might apply, the council gives the final word.
The rules differ between a house, a flat and a listed building, so we ask at the first conversation which you live in. A listed building calls for listed building consent, and the council is the body that confirms what is allowed in a conservation area. We would rather learn this before we order a unit than after it arrives.
When the job is notifiable, the Building Control notification is ours to make. The rooflight planning guide covers the rules in plain terms, and it is worth reading before you book.
01 Dark middle rooms
Hallways, landings and kitchens that sit between two walls and get no direct sun.
On the roof
In a town that has grown outward from a medieval centre, plenty of homes have a room in the middle of the plan that no window can reach. A hallway, a stairwell or a small kitchen can sit between neighbouring rooms with the roof directly overhead, and that makes the roof the only place light can come from.
Which unit goes there depends on the loft above. Where there is a clear loft space, a sun tunnel carries daylight down through a reflective tube, and it needs only a small opening in the roof covering. Where the roof is pitched and the loft is used as a room, a roof window fitted between two rafters does the same job with a larger view of the sky.
On Coleshill's older tiled roofs we take particular care with the flashing. Hand-made or weathered tiles are not always the same thickness, so the flashing kit is dressed to the roof as it is, and each course of tile is lapped over it so water runs away from the opening. The same survey notes the pitch, the covering and the rafter spacing, and the written quote names the exact unit and flashing that suit them.
Because the A446 and the motorway junctions put Coleshill within easy reach of us, a survey visit is straightforward to arrange, and we can usually look into the loft and the roof edge on the same trip.
Where the roof has a gutter or parapet close to the opening, we also check how rainwater leaves the roof around the new unit, so the water path is clear on the day the flashing goes on.
In the room
The ceiling is where a small kitchen or hallway gets its character back. We cut the opening, frame it in timber and line the sides with plasterboard, then angle the lining outward from the glass to the ceiling. That splay spreads the daylight across the room instead of dropping it in a bright patch on the floor.
In a narrow hallway the splay can be set to throw light along the length of the space rather than straight down. In a small kitchen we ask where the worktop and the table sit before we mark the line. The plastering is finished to match the existing ceiling, with the edges made good so there is no visible join where the new opening begins.
Where the roof is too shallow for a deep splay, we tell you in the quote and show you the angle we can reach, so the finished room matches what you were told.
Paint is the last step. A reveal painted in the same white as the ceiling reflects the most light, and we leave the surface sanded and ready so your decorator, or you, can match the colour of the room in a single coat.
If a hallway is lit by a sun tunnel, the ceiling diffuser is the last visible part. We fit it flush with a clean edge, so the daylight appears to come from a plain white disc and the tube above is out of sight.
That kind of finish takes a little longer than dropping a unit in, and it is the reason the room looks finished when we leave.
The short version
A room with no outside wall only needs one good opening overhead, and a well-angled reveal does the rest.
02 Lofts and flat roofs
The roof you can stand under, and the one you extended onto the garden.
On the roof
Many town homes have gained space in two ways: a loft converted upward, or a single-storey extension built outward. They bring two different roofs and two different answers.
On the pitched roof of a loft room, a roof window or a VELUX window is fitted into the slope, flashed to the tiles and sealed at the head and sides. If you want to open it for air, an electric opening unit can be raised from a wall switch or a handset, which helps when the window sits out of reach above a bed or a desk.
On the flat roof of an extension, the choice moves to a flat glass rooflight on a kerb or an upstand, or to a roof lantern if the room is wide enough to carry one. The kerb is built from timber and insulated, then covered with a weathered membrane that runs up the upstand and finishes beneath the unit's flange, so water has nowhere to travel except away.
If a flat roof is already tired, we tell you at the survey. A new rooflight needs a sound deck to sit on, so we price any work to that deck in the same fixed written quote.
Roof lanterns suit larger extensions, where the lantern's raised glass crown adds height as well as light. A lantern sits on its own upstand, so we agree its size with you against the room it covers, not against the catalogue.
A VELUX window in a loft slope also gives the option of fitting a blind or a shutter at the same visit, which helps a bedroom that needs to be dark at night as well as bright by day.
In the room
A converted loft is often a trimmed, sloping room where the ceiling follows the rafters. Fitting a window there means framing round the opening, running insulation to the edge of the frame and plastering the reveal flush with the slope so the room looks as if it was built with the window.
An extension is usually a different kind of room, a kitchen-diner or a utility space with a flat ceiling. The opening can be cut wider, and the sides splayed outward so the light fans across the table and the units. We ask where you eat, cook and sit before we settle the angle.
Finally the plasterwork is taken back to the existing ceilings and left ready for decorating, so the work ends when the room is finished and not when the glass is in.
When a kitchen-diner is large, we often suggest splitting the light between a rooflight over the working end and a smaller one nearer the seating, so no corner of the room is left in shade.
The glass is half of the job. The splayed, plastered opening under it is the other half.
Hallways without windows, consent, visits: Coleshill
Is Coleshill close enough for a free survey visit?
Yes. Coleshill is about 19 minutes from central Coventry by road, with the A446 and the motorway junctions close by. Use the form or WhatsApp us, and we will offer a time to look at the roof, the loft and the room below. A fixed written quote follows the visit.
Can a rooflight light a hallway with no window?
Often it can. A sun tunnel suits a hallway under a loft, and a roof window suits a hallway under a room in the roof. At the survey we look at the space above the ceiling, then tell you which of the two reaches your hallway and how we would finish the opening inside.
Who decides whether a rooflight in Coleshill needs consent?
North Warwickshire Borough Council is the planning authority, and it decides. We check your street for a conservation area before we quote, and the council can confirm any Article 4 direction. Our planning guide explains the rules, and we handle the Building Control notification when the work needs one.
We survey before we price.
Then we finish the room.
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