When you think about renovating your home, you probably focus on where you can incorporate new paint, flooring, or furniture. But what if the most powerful design element in your home is actually floating right above you? That's right: we're talking about natural light! With natural light through skylights, you can easily transform dark, cramped rooms into open, vibrant spaces.
So, let’s refocus your renovation to see how — and why — you should include skylights.
What Are the Benefits of Adding a Skylight to Your Home?
Adding skylights to your home offers massive benefits that go beyond just brightening up a room. Here are five of those benefits:
- Enriched Health and Well-Being: Natural light helps balance your circadian rhythm, restores your body's melatonin production, and promotes a more restful night's sleep so you have a more energizing day.
- Better Lighting: Unlike artificial lighting which can emit a yellow or blue tint, natural light provides clean, white light. It casts minimal shadows and causes less eye strain, making it one of the best light sources for your home.
- Maintain Privacy: In close-knit neighborhoods, traditional windows can open up privacy concerns. Because skylights are positioned on your roof, they bring in abundant daylight without sharing your indoor spaces with passersby.
- Fresh Air: Certain high-use rooms like kitchens and bathrooms can generate steam, moisture, and cooking odors. Venting skylights allow you to easily release indoor air pollutants and humidity, adding another natural benefit to installing skylights.
- Energy Savings: Natural light allows you to stop depending on artificial lights during the day, which can help lower electric bills. Additionally, in the summer, you can open venting skylights to let hot air escape and cool air flow in, giving your air conditioner a break. In the winter, passive solar heat gain can also help keep your home warm. And the included shade in every Skylight System helps boost the energy efficiency of each skylight even more!
Skylight Placement & Orientation: The Core of Daylight Design
To get the most out of your skylight design, it's important to understand how placement of the skylight and roof orientation will affect the space you're remodelling. The way your roof faces will determine the amount and quality of useful daylight that enters that space throughout the day.
Here is how skylight orientation can affect your home's lighting:
- North-Facing Skylights: Roofs that face north receive mostly diffused, soft light. This provides a cool, stable light that remains consistent throughout the day without creating harsh glare or hot spots.
- South-Facing Skylights: In the northern hemisphere, south-facing roofs receive direct, intense sunlight. This orientation maximizes solar heat gain, which is highly beneficial if you'd like to use your skylight to warm your space in the winter. Because of this intense afternoon sun, shades are essential when installing skylights at this orientation.
- East-Facing Skylights: East-facing roofs catch the early morning sun, providing bright, direct light during the first half of the day. This is perfect for waking up naturally or enjoying a bright breakfast.
- West-Facing Skylights: A west-facing roof captures dramatic, warm afternoon light. Like south-facing installations, skylight shades are an important addition to control heat and glare as the sun sets.
No matter the direction your roof faces, incorporating solar-powered skylight shades is an energy efficient way to have complete light control any time of day. We take care of this for you with the VELUX Skylight System, which comes standard with our room-darkening, solar-powered skylight shade.
Room-by-Room Positioning: Where You Should Install Skylights
The ideal location for your new skylights depends entirely on how you use each room. The placement will ultimately be dependent on your roof and home design, but here is a general room-by-room layout guide to help get you started optimizing your skylight design.
The Kitchen
The Goal: Maximize your daylight benefits by placing skylights directly over work surfaces, such as a kitchen island or countertops. This focused lighting helps with delicate cooking tasks like chopping and peeling.
The Extra Benefit: Venting skylights, like VELUX Fresh Air Skylight Systems, open easily to clear out cooking odors, steam, and heat. Furthermore, skylights provide up to twice the natural light of vertical windows. So, with skylights, you can get more natural light without sacrificing wall space, meaning more room for cabinet storage too! If you have a small kitchen, a rigid Sun Tunnel® skylight is a space-saving alternative that can direct light precisely where you need it.
The Bathroom
The Goal: Install a skylight directly over the tub, shower, or vanity. Placing skylights in these positions provides a clean, white light with minimal shadows, which is the perfect light for getting ready in the morning.
The Extra Benefit: Because the skylight’s windowpane faces upwards, you enjoy total privacy from neighbors. To prevent high humidity during high-use times in the bathroom, choose a venting skylight to easily release steam and any odors.
The Bedroom
The Goal: Position skylights to let you wake up naturally to a beautiful morning sunrise and help balance your circadian rhythm day in and day out.
The Extra Benefit: Natural morning light is one of the most important signals for regulating your circadian rhythm and boosting sleep quality. To ensure you can still enjoy a midday nap or a dark sleeping environment, make sure to utilize the room-darkening shade included in VELUX Skylight Systems.
The Living Room
The Goal: Position two or more skylights in a cluster to distribute daylight evenly throughout the room.
The Extra Benefit: Because the daylight enters from above, you gain total layout flexibility. You can rearrange your couches, bookshelves, and wall art as many times as you want without ever blocking your natural light source.
Visualize Your Transformation with Project Examples and Consultations
Are you ready to see how skylights can transform your living spaces? We have tools and experts ready to guide you from start to finish.
First, explore real-life transformations by visiting our online Room Gallery. You can see actual design projects that show the difference daylight can make in bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, and more.
Once inspired, designing your perfect layout is simple with professional guidance from a VELUX Design & Product Advisor. In a free consultation, your personal advisor can help you choose the right products, discuss ideal positioning, and even provide professional installer recommendations and a design plan for your space.
Click here to schedule a virtual consultation and begin planning your dream home today!
