Rooflights illuminating back neighbour’s house

[MumPlanQuery]

I am looking at a planning permission application for the neighbour directly behind mine. A 1st floor side extension and back extension.

I am wondering whether it would be reasonable to object to the use of rooflights (flat roof windows) over a kitchen extension. This would seem to be a very common thing to install and it is a north facing extension, so my feeling is this will not be reasonable!

The problem is, the house a few doors down has had a similar extension recently and all through the evening their whole (large) house is completely illuminated bright white, due to the light from the kitchen shining over the back wall. I have seen this from my neighbour’s house.

It really is incredible how much the house lights up; at first I always thought they had deliberately chosen to back-light their whole house but no, it’s just the kitchen light going upwards.

At the moment in the evenings (from 4pm in winter) our view out the back of the house is completely dark bar e.g. a frosted bathroom window in the houses behind which you don’t notice. I dread to think of us having dinner with a massive illuminated White House behind us (their back garden will be reduced to about 4m after the extension so it will be very close to us).

Has anyone else come across this problem? Is there a way that skylights/rooflights can be installed so that they let in light during the day but avoid illuminating the back of the house? Perhaps I need to ask if the skylights could be a certain distance from the wall above? Or they could be more vertical than horizontal? Or I could ask the back of their house is dark-coloured?

We will look to move our shed and replace it with some trees (whether the house behind is lit up or not) but they will not be very tall for many years.

Any advice welcome in terms of planning permission response or any clever solutions to the back-lighting problem.

Close your curtains .

Are you the neighbour @Diyextension ?!

Anyway, getting on to sensible options, OP could you say you're fine with the work but ask them to install less intrusive lighting? I know the sort of white lights you mean and I can't understand the appeal myself - maybe if you can point out what's happened with other neighbours they'd consider solutions? Not sure how you could enforce it though so you'd be reliant on goodwill.

You can object in the planning process (if it isn't permitted development). But realistically your only real option is to screen via planting.

They might choose to light up the house or garden later anyway, put windows in facing you and not draw the curtains (especially tall bifolds or sliding doors facing the garden) , or have modern thin blinds where they still light goes through so they still light up up the neighbourhood.

Worth talking to them in a friendly way, but I suspect you'll be planting trees soon enough.

Thank you all for these comments. I guess we will need to get some sort of blinds/curtains installed as well as moving the shed and planting conifers.

IF the neighbours are friendly, suggest they get blinds for their veluxes. Keeps the heat in, tell them that for an incentive. (It does) If you asked nicely they might even make them blackout blinds too, though that costs a little more.