In the dark? How to get more light into your home

Not everyone is blessed with a home that benefits from south-facing rooms that are flooded with natural light. Yet there are clever ways to draw light into your home, which will completely transform the space you live in.

The good news is there are ways to do it without too much upheaval – and no extension needed – as architects Laura Jane Clark and Robert Jamison reveal.

Dark rooms are brought into the light

On an episode of the BBC2 series Your Home Made Perfect we met a couple living in a 1970s home that just wasn’t working for them. One of the main drawbacks was the lack of light downstairs. A south-facing, light-filled entrance hallway was housing a drab circulation space that tried to cater for too many things; while at the back of the house, the disjointed living rooms and kitchen were resigned to the north-facing side.

The result? A ground floor that suffered from dark rooms with no connection. Yet the floorplan had potential.

Clark and Jamison were entrusted with coming up with a design each, to encourage more natural light into the home while also creating a cohesive space that functioned for everyone in the family. Both designs focused on ways to do it, and both opted for an open-plan layout to dissolve the walls that stood in the way of natural light flowing freely around the ground floor.

Here’s what they suggested.

1. Add a window to an otherwise blank wall

In both designs, the architects suggested adding more or bigger windows to the space at the back, on the north-facing side of the house. Downstairs, at the back of the house, there was no window on the west-facing side, which missed a trick in capturing the warmth of west-facing light.

Jamison tackled this problem head on and introduced a new window. This had a dramatic effect on how much light came in.

“Understanding the path of the sun around your house is key,” said Jamison, whose virtual reality plan showed how the light would travel over the house throughout the day. Even though the window was opposite another building, a dappled light would shine deep into the kitchen as the day went on.

As the light would be coming in from the west, he explained: “In the afternoon a very warm light [would filter in] as the sun sets.”

2. Introduce a curvaceous light well

Jamison wanted to encourage high-level light to flow down into the ground floor, without fitting roof lights or roof windows. Instead, he added a light well (or light scoop) above the newly positioned window to catch the sun’s path as it passed over and around the house.

How did he do it? He cleverly pinched 1m (39in) in height and 1.5m (59in) in width from a storage room situated directly above the window, on the first floor.

And though it sacrificed space in the room above, the design demonstrated how much lighter the ground floor space would become if it was installed. It channeled directional light from above and provided a view up and out, too.

The light well wasn’t rectangular in shape – Jamison introduced a curved “organic form [casting] soft shadows” to aid aesthetics. The cost to do something similar in your own home is around £3,000.

3. Add skylights to a flat roof

Clark looked at tackling the north-facing end of the house and worked on the principles of light in her design. She explained how light from the north is flat but clear, so even on dreary days, light will filter in and bounce around a space. She embraced an open-plan layout and took this a step further by opening up the ceiling to the sky as well.

The virtual design showed a row of skylights slotted into the flat roof that already existed at the back of the house, which showed how shards of light would filter down into the new space.

The couple chose Clark’s design in the end, and opted for a horizontal rectangular skylight above the kitchen area and two square skylights that pooled light into what otherwise would have been rather gloomy corners. Cleverly-designed artificial lighting in the way of spotlights and pendant lighting added a layer of light and warmth to the newly configured, open-plan space.

4. Incorporate a picture window with a seat

Clark incorporated a picture window with a seat into the snug area of her design. Picture windows tend to be slightly wider and higher than standard windows. Introducing deep timber reveals (the frame around the top, bottom and side in which a window sits) turned what could have been a standard window into a window seat with views out onto the garden beyond.

The frameless glazing created a better connection to the garden and attributed to the increased levels of natural light bathing the space, too.

5. Pick sliding doors for an unobstructed view

Interestingly, Clark did choose bifold doors in her virtual design, but the homeowners opted for sliding doors. The set of three panes were large and measured nearly the entire width of the back wall, essentially creating a glass wall.

If you have a large-ish aperture like the homeowners in this episode, then sliding doors are a good option. The frames are less bulky than those you get on bifold doors, which can hinder the view. Sliding doors don’t concertina but slide over the top of each other, so even when open you have uninterrupted views out onto the garden, which in this case is what the homeowners wanted.