Adding a skylight to your home is a wonderful way to allow natural light into dark or dreary rooms. A skylight can help bring natural light into areas of your home that were previously only lit by lamps. Many homeowners report that adding a skylight makes a room feel more open, alive, and welcoming.

At Reflect Window & Door, our Edmonton skylight installation experts have worked on hundreds of skylight projects. It’s always exciting for us to see the amazing improvements to a room’s lighting that a skylight can produce. However, installing a skylight can be a tricky project. In today’s post, we’ll cover a few tips to help your skylight project go smoothly.

Understand the Sun’s Movement. A skylight doesn’t offer the same type of light as bulb! When planning for a skylight, many people make the mistake of thinking that the sun provides even and static lighting all day and all year. Of course, this isn’t true. Make sure you really think about skylight placement and how your planned position relates to the movement of the sun.

Consider Ventilation Options. Most homeowners install skylights to help bring natural light into a room. However, remember that many skylights also offer the ability to open and let in fresh air as well. This isn’t always the right choice, depending on your climate and the position of your skylight. However, in the right situations, a ventilated skylight can be a wonderful feature for your home.

Be Careful About DIY. Many homeowners love DIY projects, and there’s plenty of window and door projects which are great for weekend warriors. Skylight installation, however, might not be the best DIY project. There are many complexities to installing skylights, including weatherproofing, insulation, placement, and more. Furthemore, installing a skylight requires getting up on your roof and working at tricky angles. More than a few homeowners have suffered dangerous falls trying to DIY roof work. This doesn’t mean that DIY isn’t an option, but it should be researched carefully and done with safety as a priority.

Think About Exterior Aesthetics. When planning for a skylight, most people are mainly concerned with how it will look from the inside. However, don’t forget that a skylight installation can have a major impact on the exterior of your home as well. This is especially true with more traditional home styles that are simply not designed with skylights in mind. This is especially important for those considering selling their homes – an out of place skylight can have a negative impact on “curb appeal.”

Don’t Skimp on Quality. There are many skylight products on the market today. In almost all cases, our experience is that homeowners should always be prepared to pay a little more for a top-quality product. In most cases, the installation of a skylight is more expensive than the product itself. After going through all the effort to cut the opening in your roof, it only makes sense to choose the right product. Additionally, Skylights face lots of pressure from poor weather – choosing a quality product will save money by preventing costly future repairs.

We hope these tips have helped you learn a little more about skylights and how to plan a successful skylight installation project. If you’re located in the Edmonton, Alberta area and would like to learn more about skylight installation, the team at Reflect Window & Door can help. Contact us today for a free skylight consultation.