Lowering Bills with Natural Light

As the cost of living continues to rise across the world, especially the cost of heating and cooling our homes, people are spending more and more time looking for ways in which they can reduce their energy usage and, as a result, the size of their utility bills. As leading skylight suppliers in the UK, we spend much of our time helping people to use sunlight in order to lower their gas and electricity bills and we would like to share our experiences with you today. Below, after a short explanation of how more sunlight can help you to lower your energy costs, we offer you our top tips on how to introduce more of it into your home.

How Can Natural Light Reduce the Size of Your Utility Bills?

Before we share our top tips, we should explain how more natural daylight is able to help you lower your energy costs in the first place. There are three main ways in which the introduction of more daylight into your home can help you to cut your energy usage and costs:

• Reducing the Need for Artificial Illumination During the Day 
• Providing More Heat on Fine, Cold Days
• Providing More Ventilation in Warm Weather

Whether you should take full advantage of one, two or all three of these ways to reduce your energy usage will depend on your personal preferences and the type of property in which you live. If you would like more light but not more heat from new skylights, for example, you can have them fitted with special glazing that blocks almost all of the heat from the sun’s rays.

Our Top Tips on Using Natural Light to Reduce the Size of Your Gas and Electricity Bills

There are several easy ways in which you can harness the power of natural light to help lower the cost of heating and cooling your home in the UK:

• Install Larger Windows in Strategically Chosen Locations – If you are in the UK then you are, of course, living in the Northern Hemisphere. As such, if your property has a south-facing aspect, it is the rooms with windows on this side that will naturally receive the most sunlight throughout the course of each day. You can use this knowledge to your advantage by installing large, panoramic windows in the locations where they will allow the most daylight to enter your home, for the longest period of time. You may wish to keep east and west-facing rooms in mind as secondary locations, for more morning and afternoon daylight respectively.
• Install Quality Skylights – Whether you have a property in which larger windows cannot be installed or you would simply like to maximise the amount of daylight that enters your home, skylights could be the perfect solution. When fitted in locations chosen with the help of local experts, modern skylights can introduce a great deal more natural light into residential properties.
• Make Use of Sun Tunnels – Skylights are great for introducing more natural light into the upper-storey rooms of two-storey properties and all rooms in bungalows. If you would like to allow more sunlight into other rooms, rooms that are not directly beneath the roof, you can still achieve your aims using skylights, by using them in combination with sun tunnels. With these highly-reflective tubes, you can transmit natural light to ground-floor areas in your home too. 
• Use a Lighter Tonal Palette for Your Interior Design Schemes – If you have not tried this particular idea before, you may be surprised at how effective it can be. Simply by painting your walls in lighter, and therefore more reflective, colours, you can delay the time at which you will need to turn on the lights in your home every evening.
• Use Special Glazing Where Appropriate – For example: if you decide to fit a large panoramic window in a south-facing room, you may wish to use glazing with a solar control coating. In this way, you can minimise any heat gain that you may experience on sunny days.
• Follow the Light, if Possible – If you have east and west facing rooms, try to use those on the east side in the mornings and those on the west side in the evenings, if it makes sense to do so.

Whether you decide to try one, a few or all of the above ideas, you should notice a marked difference as far as your future utility costs are concerned. If you like the idea of using skylights to provide better daytime illumination, and perhaps more ventilation too, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to discuss your needs. We will be very happy to provide you with any additional information you may need and to recommend suitable skylight models if desired.

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