Roof windows and skylights in Leeds

On your street

Roof windows on a Headingley terrace

LS6 has been converting lofts for thirty years, and roof windows are how most of those rooms get their light. On a slate terrace in Headingley, Hyde Park or Woodhouse that means a slate flashing kit and a recessed fit that sits down into the plane of the roof, rather than the raised profile kit that suits an interlocking concrete tile out in the suburbs. Using the wrong one is the single most common reason I get called to somebody else's leak.

Where you put it matters as much as how it is fitted. Conservation areas including Headingley Hill, Chapel Allerton and parts of Roundhay generally expect rooflights on the rear slope rather than the elevation facing the street, and a conservation-style flat-profile window in place of a standard one is often the difference between a straightforward job and a refusal.

On the stone slate roofs further out, at Adel, Horsforth and Bramhope, the stone is thick, heavy and laid in diminishing courses, so the opening has to be formed carefully and the flashing dressed to a much deeper unit. It is a slower fit and it should be quoted as one. Anybody pricing it the same as a Velux in a concrete tile has not looked at the roof.

Most of these go into a loft conversion, which usually means a dormer as well. flat roof repair and replacement on dormers, roof repairs, if an existing rooflight is leaking and what fitting a roof window costs.