Four-storey house design: Converting an office into an illuminated home

We were delighted to recently visit Jenni who took us through the changes she and her family made to their home to bring daylight in and create a beautiful living space in the kitchen. This has been an area of the home that previously wasn’t quite looking how they wanted it to. Despite purchasing the home a couple of years ago, it wasn’t to the family’s tastes and over time adapted each room so that it fitted with the unique style that they were going for.

“I work for a property company where we specialise in purchasing rundown property, we then do it up and sell it on. In my spare time, I like to go to yoga, go to the gym, walk the dog and eat lots of my husband's cooking that he prepares in the kitchen. Which is the area of the home we wanted to improve.”

“Our old kitchen was very dark and dingy but now that we've had the extension and brand new Vario by VELUX rooflights put in, it looks so much lighter and brighter. It’s made a real difference to our home.”

Bringing new life to the kitchen

“When we saw the house to start with, my husband said that he loved everything about the house but the kitchen is just too small for the size of the property there. Obviously, being in the industry he said there was plenty of room in the garden to extend. So that's what we decided to do after we had been here a couple of years.”

“As a family, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen and where it was small before, we wanted an area that wasn’t closed off and to develop it into being one of the main areas of the house.”

“We sat down with the architect to talk about designing with daylight and bringing the outside in. From that chat, we decided to choose the flat rooflights because I just think it's a little bit more modern - and the architects said the same thing - we could have gone with pitched ones or the lantern style, but we just really like the fact that it offers uninterrupted views up to the sky.”