What decides how much light a room gets is where its openings are, not how big the room is. A north-facing room with one small window can feel gloomy at midday, and a big room with no window at all can feel closed in no matter what colour the walls are painted. Both are fixed the same way, by getting more daylight into the room, and it's worth trying before anyone talks about knocking a wall out or building on.
We wrote about removing a load-bearing wall recently, and it ends on the point that taking a wall out only helps if there's light on the other side of it to borrow. If there isn't, opening up two dark rooms just gives you one bigger dark room. This is the other half of that conversation: what to do when the light itself is the thing missing.
Where the light can come from
There are three ways to get more daylight into a room that doesn't have enough: bring it in from above with a skylight or roof window, bring it in from the side with new or bigger glazing in an external wall, or borrow it from an adjoining room that already has a window. Most jobs end up using one or two of these, not all three, because the right one depends on what's actually around the room.
A room under a roof with no wall available for a bigger window is a skylight candidate. A room with an external wall that just has a small, poorly placed window is a glazing job. A room in the middle of the house with no external wall at all, like a lot of older internal bathrooms and hallways, only has the borrowed light option, because there's no roof or outside wall to put an opening in.
Skylights and roof windows
A skylight lets in far more light than most people expect for its size. The Australian Government's Your Home guide to skylights and roof windows puts a number on it: a skylight can admit more than three times as much light as a vertical window of the same size. That's also the reason to be conservative when sizing one. A skylight cut to "let in plenty of light" usually lets in too much, and the room ends up too bright at one time of day and glary at another.
The same guide is blunt that skylights work both ways on heat. Like any glazing facing the sky, they can be a real source of summer heat gain and winter heat loss if the product isn't matched to the job. Roof windows, which are usually openable and built to the specific roof, suit locations with more cloud cover because they're designed to make the most of diffuse light. Tubular skylights, the small dome-and-reflective-tube type, are better suited to sunnier climates and to rooms too small or too enclosed for a full skylight well, a walk-in robe or a windowless bathroom being the usual candidates. Products under the Window Energy Rating Scheme (WERS) carry a rating that makes it possible to compare the heat performance of one skylight against another before you buy, rather than guessing.
Where a skylight lands in the room matters as much as its size. Directly over a benchtop or a shower gives useful light exactly where it's needed. Centred in a room for symmetry can look right on a plan and still leave the corners dark.
New or bigger windows
If the room has an external wall, more glazing there is usually the straightforward fix, and it solves the heat problem a skylight can create because a vertical window doesn't take the same direct overhead sun. The two things that decide whether it's simple or not are the wall and the aspect.
A stud wall with nothing structural in it is a straightforward opening, subject to the usual approval questions. A wall carrying the roof or an upper floor is a different job, the one covered in removing a load-bearing wall, where a lintel or beam has to pick up what the wall used to carry around the new opening.
Aspect matters more than most people think about upfront. A bigger window facing north brings in useful winter light without the harsh summer sun a west-facing window carries into a room through the afternoon. A window added purely for light on a wall that faces a neighbour's fence line at close range can also run straight into a privacy problem, which is where a higher window, frosted or textured glass, or a highlight window above eye height earns its keep.
Borrowed light between rooms
For a room with no outside wall at all, the only real option is taking light from a room next to it that already has some. This is what borrowed light actually means: a glazed panel over a doorway, a highlight window set into the top of a wall between a hallway and a bedroom, or an internal wall swapped for a section of glass or glass blocks.
It's a good fix for a dark hallway sitting between two rooms with windows, or a windowless internal bathroom borrowing from an adjoining bedroom through a high, frosted panel that keeps privacy intact. It does less for a room you actually need to be dark or quiet, a main bedroom or a home office, because the same opening that lets light through also lets sound through.
When the answer is an extension instead
None of this fixes a room that's simply too small for what you want to do in it. If the real problem is floor area, not daylight, more glazing dresses up a room that will still feel tight, and the money is better spent on a ground-floor extension or a new opening that also adds space rather than just light. The way to tell the difference is to ask what's actually wrong with the room on a bright day. If it still doesn't work, it was never about the light.
Approval and energy requirements
Most of this work sits in a grey area that's worth checking rather than assuming. A skylight into an existing roof, away from a boundary and not on a heritage-affected property, is often straightforward. A new opening in a structural wall, a large area of new glazing, or anything on a heritage item or in a conservation area can need a development application or a complying development certificate, the same distinction covered in CDC vs DA in NSW. Confirm which applies before you commit to a size or a position, not after the opening is cut.
New glazing and skylights also have to meet the energy efficiency provisions that sit inside NCC 2025 Volume Two, which is one of the reasons a WERS rating on the product you choose matters and not just its size.
A room that never feels right, whatever the hour, is worth a look in person before settling on a skylight, a bigger window, or borrowed light from next door. Call 0434 037 851 or send the details through the contact page; our home renovations page covers how the rest of the job runs.
Common questions
- What is borrowed light?
- Borrowed light is daylight taken from a room that has a window and passed into a room that doesn't, usually through a glazed panel above a door, a highlight window into a hallway, or an internal wall swapped for glass. It doesn't add light to the house overall, it moves light that's already coming in somewhere else into a room that has nowhere of its own to get it. It works best on internal bathrooms, studies and hallways rather than a room you need privacy or quiet in.
- Do skylights make a room hotter in summer?
- They can, because a skylight faces the sky and picks up more direct sun through the middle of the day than a vertical window does. A well-specified skylight with the right glazing and, where the climate calls for it, a shading or diffuser fitting keeps that in check. The mistake is sizing a skylight for maximum light rather than the room's actual needs, which is also the mistake that lets in the most heat.
- What's the difference between a skylight, a roof window and a solar tube?
- A skylight is a fixed or openable glazed unit set into the roof structure. A roof window is similar but usually openable and built to the specific roof, often used where you also want ventilation. A solar tube (or tubular skylight) collects light through a small dome on the roof and carries it down a reflective tube to a diffuser in the ceiling, which suits a small room like a walk-in robe or a windowless bathroom where a full skylight well doesn't fit.
- Does adding a skylight or new window need council approval?
- It depends on the roof or wall it's going into, the size of the opening and what overlay applies to the property, so it's not something to assume either way. A straightforward skylight into an existing roof is often minor work; cutting a new opening into a load-bearing wall or a heritage-affected roof is a bigger question. Confirm the path with your certifier before you settle on a size or position.
- Is adding glazing cheaper than building an extension?
- Almost always, if what the room actually needs is light rather than floor area. A skylight or a run of new glazing is a fraction of the cost of a ground-floor extension, and it can turn an unusable dark room into a comfortable one without moving a single wall. Where it doesn't help is when the room is simply too small, and no amount of light changes that.
Want a hand with this at your place? Get a free quote or call 0434 037 851.