Renovation Guide: How to Create More Light in a Period Home

Older homes don’t have to be dark and dingy; they can be spacious and bright if they are renovated carefully.

How much light your property lets in will depend on whether it was designed with natural brightness in mind, when it was built, the construction materials used, its original function and if it has had alterations over the years.

Historic details

Medieval buildings are usually thought of as quite dark, with small windows. But higher status houses had open halls, which would have had very large, double-height windows; plus medium-sized openings in the parlour and much meaner apertures in service or storage rooms.

Improvements in glass making during the 17th century led to the development of larger sash windows. This made it easier to get daylight into homes but was quickly limited by the imposition of the window tax, which caused many openings to be bricked up to avoid the levy.

By the mid 19th century, the tax was gone. The Victorians were huge believers that daylight had important health benefits. This, along with technological advances, led to the almost universal use of large sash windows. These allow for significant amounts of brightness, but this does mean Victorian houses have more issues with heat loss through glazing than they do with letting in light.

Reinstating openings

The most straightforward and least disruptive method of getting more light into an old building is to identify former openings and reinstate them to create new windows. This is why it’s important to know a building’s historical background.

The better you understand the development of the house over time, the better your chance of identifying apertures that have been closed up in the past, when that was done and why.

Windows and doors will have been sealed up for various reasons over their history – done using a range of materials from historic bricks to breeze blocks. Reinstating an original opening will not disrupt the overall appearance of the building or interfere with the architectural intention.

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