Last Updated on February 2, 2023 by teamobn
Natural light will always be a better option than artificial light. It touches your home with a rich color that light bulbs could never achieve. And it highlights your home, revealing how functional, warm, and beautiful it is.
To invite more light into your home, you can add a skylight to your roof. Most people think that skylights are merely an aesthetic feature, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a practical feature that livens up your place, making your space even more attractive and helping you reduce your energy bills.
Continue reading to learn about the basics and benefits of skylights, including your installation option.
Understanding Skylights
At its core, a skylight is essentially a window on your roof. While a traditional window allows natural light into your home, a skylight does so from above. Hence, it’s often called a roof window.
If you want to direct natural light to other rooms or on your home’s lower floor, use a sun tunnel. This variation of sunlight uses an acrylic dome to capture sunlight, magnify it, and send it down the tube into a light diffuser.
While a skylight has a similar purpose that a traditional window, its installation is a bit more complicated. But if the skylight is small enough to fit between two rafters or trusses, its installation will be easier to do as a DIY project. So, if you have the core skills for carpentry and window installation, you can carry out this project on your own.
However, it’s recommended to just hire a contractor for a skylight installation. Even if you think you’ve installed your skylight properly, issues like leaking and roof damage can be problematic. On the other hand, working with a qualified contractor will ensure proper installation or help with skylight leak repair that may be required during your DIY project.
The Benefits Of Installing Skylights
Whether you hire a contractor or go the DIY route, investing in a skylight will be beneficial to you and your family. Below are some reasons why you should install a skylight in your home.
1. It Allows Natural Light
This is the most obvious reason why you should install your own skylight. Like windows, skylights let in natural light.
They can help fill your room with natural colors. In case you’re worried about receiving too much sunlight, you can find skylights treated with UV filters. Or you can also work with your contractor to get a skylight installed in a way that prevents direct sunlight into your room.
Whether your home has limited windows or you just want to brighten up an area, you won’t go wrong with a skylight.
2. It Improves Ventilation
Other than maximizing natural light in your home, skylights are a great solution to improve home ventilation.
Some skylights that are called vented skylights can open and close, so they’re suitable for homes with ventilation and airflow issues. Since they’re installed on roofs, they can release hot air and bring fresh air into your home, keeping the space less stuffy.
When installed in bathrooms, skylights can help draw out the steam, preventing fog and moisture, which can cause mildew and mold to form. Similarly, when installed in kitchen areas, skylights can help eliminate cooking odors and keep areas cool.
3. It Helps Save Energy
By inviting natural light all year round into your home with a skylight, you can subsequently reduce your overall reliance on artificial lights. With less artificial lighting used, you can lower your utility bills and save more money that you can use to pay for necessities.
In addition, a skylight contributes to energy savings during the colder months. When the sun goes down sooner during winter, a skylight allows you to make the most of the limited hours of sunlight. Furthermore, solar heat from a skylight is a great way to cut down on your HVAC bill and help your system maintain a comfortable temperature in your home throughout the day.
4. It Creates The Illusion Of A Bigger Space
When more natural light streams into a room, your space feels and looks bigger, regardless of its size. This is why most home improvement articles recommend opening windows and adding more mirrors if you want to make any room or area more spacious visually.
So, if you have a smaller home with limited windows, adding a skylight will help create the illusion of a bigger space.
5. It Boosts Your Mood And Overall Health
With more natural light in your home because of a skylight, you’ll experience a better mood and overall well-being.
In fact, exposure to natural light can help your body receive vitamin D, allow you to focus, and become more productive. It can help improve your circadian rhythm too, so you’ll get to sleep better at night. In short, getting enough natural light in your home is the key to having stronger mental and physical health.
6. It Increases Your Home’s Resale Value
A skylight installation is one of those renovation projects that can significantly boost your home’s resale value. Since a skylight helps improve the overall aesthetics of your interior design and your home’s energy efficiency, it makes your home more attractive to potential buyers.
Thus, if you plan to sell your home in the future, adding a skylight will be worth it. Even if you don’t have any plans to sell your property, a skylight can increase your home’s appeal by highlighting the architectural and interior designs.
7. It Protects Your Privacy
Though windows are lovely and useful features that brighten and ventilate your home, they can negatively affect your privacy. It explains why homes that are built close together are designed with limited windows to protect homeowners’ privacy.
With a skylight, you won’t have to worry about this. You can let natural light in and protect your privacy in your own home.
Takeaway
Installing a skylight can completely transform your home, lighting it up and emphasizing its beauty. A skylight may seem like an aesthetic feature in any space, but it offers so much more than that, such as lowering your energy bills and improving your well-being.
