When I’m looking to redesign or extend a house, I often look to the staircase as my initial focal point. Usually positioned around the mid-point of any house plan, it is a great place to look to bring height, light and drama into a space.
Creating a lightwell at the top of your stairs can add drama and cascade natural light down through your plan. It is common for stairs to be sitting against the outside wall and positioned underneath the junction with your roof. A straightforward, albeit fiddly, way to open up your existing stairwell is to remove the existing flat ceiling, open up and create a sloped ceiling to your existing roof rafter line, then install rooflights to flood the stairwell with light. This idea can be detailed in a couple of ways - keeping the existing roof timbers in place and using them as a retained feature, or creating a structural opening to make a fully-glazed mini atrium above your stairwell.