There’s nothing more luxurious than a room flooded with natural light. A skylight can help your home look more airy and spacious. But it can also improve your mood and quality of sleep. After all, what’s more relaxing than falling asleep under the stars while remaining in the comfort of your own home?
Here’s what you need to know before installing a skylight in your home.
1. Glass Performs Better Than Acrylic
Acrylic skylights can get brittle and yellow with age. This increases the likelihood of them fracturing under a heavy blanket of snow or during a hailstorm. Acrylic also doesn’t offer the same transparency as glass, which can distort your view of the outside.
Acrylic skylights were popular in the 1980’s. But we’ve come a long way since then. Many use Neat® glass, which is much smoother than ordinary glass. This allows rain to sheet off your skylight and evaporate quickly so it doesn’t leave behind water spots.
VELUX skylights with Neat glass also reduce outside noise by 50%, compared to plastic skylights. Perfect for urban dwellings!
2. VELUX Skylights Come With a No Leak Promise
To install a skylight, a contractor will need to cut a hole in your roof. As such, it’s normal to worry about your skylight leaking at some point. The good news is that VELUX skylights come with a and feature three layers of water protection.
The VELUX No Leak Promise includes:
- 10-Year Installation Warranty
- 20-Year Glass Warranty
- 10-Year Product Warranty
- 5-Year Shades and Controls Warranty
Some of the VELUX skylights also come with rain sensors. If these sensors detect inclement weather, they’ll automatically close the skylights to ensure no water gets inside your home.
3. Each Project is Different
Each project has unique factors that will affect the installation and timeline. For this reason, we recommend reaching out to a reputable, local contractor. A contractor will be able to give you a more detailed plan for how they’ll install the skylight in your home.
Factors that affect skylight installation include:
- Skylight model
- Number of skylights
- Your type of ceiling (flat or vaulted)
No skylight project is the same. That’s why you need to take the above factors into consideration when planning your next project.
4. You Can Still Get a Skylight if You Have a Flat Ceiling
It’s a misconception that you can’t get a skylight if you have flat ceilings. But it is true that your contractor will need to follow a different installation process. This is because they’ll need to build a light shaft in your attic.
When the sun streams through the skylight on the roof, it’ll pass through the light shaft and enter a second skylight on your flat ceiling. For the sake of design continuity, your contractor will paint the inside of your light shaft the same color as the ceiling below.
5. Installation Will Take Between a Half-Day and Three Days
In general, your contractor will be able to install your skylight in as little as a half day or up to three days. The timeline will depend on the complexity of the installation. For example, it’ll take more time if your contractor has to build a light shaft to accommodate flat ceilings. Likewise, your timeline will take longer if you’re installing more than one skylight or if the weather prohibits working on the roof.
6. Unless You’re an Expert, You’ll Need to Hire a Contractor
VELUX offers resources for the DIY-er. But we don’t recommend going down this route unless you feel 100% confident in your construction skills. To install a skylight, you’ll need to cut a hole through the roof. This is very labor intensive and requires a high skill level.
If you don’t install skylights for a living, we recommend hiring a contractor. That way, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your skylight is installed correctly and won’t leak with the first rain.
7. Skylights Shouldn’t Turn Your Home into an Oven
Are you worried about your home turning into a solar oven? The good news is that you can position your skylight to the North or East so it won’t bring in direct sunlight. This will help reduce how much your home heats up during the day. You may also purchase blinds for your skylight so you can close them during the hottest times of the day.
Contact Eikenhout to Get Started
Eikenhout is a VELUX skylight supplier with nine Michigan locations. To learn more about our VELUX skylights, please call any of our Michigan locations. You may also fill out our online contact form and someone from our team will reach out to you soon.
This blog post has been updated.
