Australia’s housing is at a tipping point. We need to build 1.2 million homes over the next five years to meet growing demand. However, this doesn’t just mean more apartments, but medium or gentle density created by unlocking housing in our existing suburbs. This includes townhouses, duplexes, triplexes and micro-lot homes.

The shift away from typical single or double-level dwellings is evident in the 2026 HIA Australian Home of the Year. Cloudbreak is a five-level townhouse, and it’s the first time a home of this kind has taken out the award. As winning builder Nick McDonald states, ‘With less space on the ground, perhaps our homes need to take more space in the sky, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of privacy or lifestyle.’

As blocks become smaller and narrower, density increases, and multiple-level housing becomes the norm, the challenge for architects and builders is to ensure homes receive enough natural light to maintain energy efficiency, wellbeing and aesthetics without sacrificing privacy.

This often means you can’t rely on windows and even traditional skylights to illuminate and ventilate the darker centres of homes. If a block is small and narrow, and a home rises up several storeys, the view through the windows will often be next door’s wall or living room. Where does the precious commodity of natural light come from?

From the sky to the floor

The just-launched solution from manufacturer VELUX is a Walk-On Skylight installed in the floor. Complementing a roof skylight, it can be positioned for what VELUX calls the Daylight Waterfall - light cascading down from the roof through the floor into the depths of the home.

It’s not a new idea, but VELUX have made the complicated simple, offering a standardised, factory-assembled 1000mm x 2000mm double-glazed unit engineered for strength and durability that supports a range of residential design outcomes.

These include transferring daylight through multiple levels, reducing reliance on vertical windows, increasing design flexibility and supporting high-performance homes. It can also help preserve wall space, support privacy requirements and create distinctive architectural features.

Managing Director of VELUX Australia, New Zealand & Japan, Kristy Ryan, says VELUX wanted to give architects and building designers new ways to design with daylight. ‘Homes are becoming more complex, and architects are constantly looking for new opportunities to bring daylight into spaces where conventional windows may not be practical,’ she says.

‘For VELUX, that means thinking not only about how daylight enters a home, but how it can travel through it.’

A design response on The Block

VELUX Walk-On Skylights feature in the current season of Network Nine’s The Block. The show’s resident architect Julian Brenchley says one of the challenges in contemporary residential design is finding new ways to bring natural light into parts of the home that have limited access to windows.

‘The Walk-On Skylight allowed us to think differently about the direction that daylight could travel between levels and become part of the architectural experience of the home,’ he says.

The Block homes, located on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula coastline, were all on narrow or constrained sites and there is only so much opportunity to bring natural light in from the sides of a home. That meant looking up and making use of the roof to bring daylight into areas that might otherwise rely heavily on artificial lighting.

Privacy also matters on narrow suburban blocks. Large windows might let light in but can also provide your neighbours with unwanted views into your personal space. The Block bathrooms demonstrated how overhead daylight can provide generous light without sacrificing privacy.

Luxurious, healthy and wise

‘For any builder working on a narrow block, I think there is a really practical conversation to have with the client about where the natural light is actually going to come from and where the light is going to flow,’ Kristy says.

‘Positioning is crucial, especially for getting light to penetrate through levels. Where you put the skylight can be just as important as having one.

‘There is also a sense of luxury, design aesthetic and theatre, with the dramatic visual effect of being able to look from one level down to the one below.This can only be achieved using trafficable glazing,’ Kristy adds.

There is also the wellbeing factor that comes with natural light. It triggers our circadian rhythms – the body’s 24-hour internal clock. It is important for regulating sleep, our physical health and mood by releasing serotonin, Vitamin D and making spaces feel open.

While the finished result has the impact of a highly bespoke architectural feature, the VELUX Walk-On Skylight has been designed to make that outcome more achievable. As a standardised solution, it provides greater clarity around product, specification and budgeting from the outset.

‘There’s a perception that a feature like this needs to be highly bespoke and complex, but that doesn’t have to be the case,’ Kristy says. ‘The Walk-On gives architects and builders a more straightforward and accessible way to create a really distinctive design outcome and bring daylight deeper into the home.’

Engineered in Denmark and developed to VELUX's global quality and performance standards, the Walk-On Skylight further expands the company's daylight-focused product portfolio for residential design.

Available now across Australia, the VELUX Walk-On Skylight is supported by technical documentation, local support and a 10-year VELUX warranty.

To view more of VELUX Walk-On Skylights on The Block go to:

Disclaimer: Brand promotion: This article was compiled with contributions from VELUX.