A skylight is a window located on the roof of a structure to provide interior building spaces with natural daylight, warmth, and ventilation. A skylight can provide your home with daylighting and warmth. When properly selected and installed, an energy-efficient skylight can help minimize your heating, cooling, and lighting costs.

Skylight design considerations

Before selecting a skylight for your home, you need to determine what type of skylight will work best and where to improve your home's energy efficiency.

Energy performance:

First, it's a good idea to understand the energy performance ratings of skylights if you don't already. You can then determine what energy performance ratings you need for your skylight based on your climate and home's design.

For labeling energy-efficient skylights in the United States, ENERGY STAR has established minimum energy performance rating criteria by climate. However, this criteria doesn't account for a home's design. Therefore, if you're constructing a new home or doing some major remodeling, you should also take advantage of the opportunity to incorporate your skylight design and selection as an integral part of your whole-house design – an approach for building an energy-efficient home.

Size and position

The physical size of the skylight greatly affects the illumination level and temperature of the space below. As a rule of thumb, the skylight size should never be more than 5% of the floor area in rooms with many windows and no more than 15% of the room's total floor area for spaces with few windows.