After three years of intending to do it, and six months of serious planning, we finally got skylights upstairs!
Here are before and after photos that I took. The camera adjusted its exposure for the scene, so mostly what you see (besides the presence of the new skylight) is a change in color temperature. But it's masking the fact that these rooms are now blasted with light, far more than they had before.
First up is the bathroom, which had several light fixtures so wasn't so dark. But it really did need some natural light, and definitely needed a real exhaust fan (tucked up in the skylight chase).
| bathroom: before | bathroom: after |
Up next is the "vestibule", the small area at the top of the stairs. It has one light fixture, and some natural light bleeding in from an adjacent room (crazy interior windows) but otherwise it was pretty dark. Notice how different the flooring looks.
| vestibule: before | vestibule: after |
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Finally, the stairwell. This was a real cave, and impossible for anybody with imperfect vision. Again the camera is trying to adjust its exposure, but you can see how dark it was in the stairwell before -- so dark that the camera couldn't even really do anything with it. This skylight was actually a "SunTunnel", a cylindrical skylight that is much easier to install than a classic rectangular skylight. The SunTunnel was needed here because there was too much stuff (e.g. air ducts) going on above the ceiling and it was nearly impossible to get access all the way up there.
| stairwell: before | stairwell: after |
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These spaces are now even getting better lighting at night, by virtue of the night sky coming down through the skylights. No more tripping in the dark!