Less daylight because of your neighbours? What the court weighs

Does less daylight from your neighbours count legally?

Less daylight caused by a neighbour’s extension, addition or roof addition can count legally. Article 5:37 of Book 5 of the Civil Code (BW) prohibits the unlawful “withholding of light or air” from another property, and light there is broader than just direct sun. Judges have weighed daylight loss as a separate, accepted yardstick and in 2024 and 2025 even imposed construction stops. There is no hard threshold percentage for daylight; the court weighs the nature, severity and duration.

That matters, because sunlight (sun hours) and daylight (sky light) are often lumped together. For an objection or a neighbour-law case it pays to separate them: the sunlight standard is the familiar route, but daylight loss is a second leg that judges, going by recent rulings, look at more and more often. This guide explains how it works and how to substantiate it.

Sun and daylight: two different things

Sunlight is the number of hours of direct sun on a point, tested against the TNO standard. Daylight is something else: the amount of sky light a window receives, even on a cloudy day and even without the sun shining directly. A wall or addition right in front of a window can barely touch the sun hours yet remove a large part of the sky. That is exactly the situation the sunlight standard misses: the sun largely remains, but the sky disappears behind the new wall.

The two measures each have their own place in the law. The table below sets them side by side, including what Schaduwplan shows for each.

How does the court measure daylight loss?

First, the crucial distinction. In such cases the court has an expert calculate the indoor daylight factor (DF): how much daylight reaches a working plane inside the room, in line with NEN-EN 17037 or the equivalent daylight area of NEN 2057. That is a different, more complete figure than a sky-view indication. A sky-view or Vertical Sky Component measures, on the outside of the window, how much sky it still sees. The sky-view is a handy, conservative first indication; it does not replace the expert calculation.

With that distinction in hand: judges have in fact let the indoor daylight factor weigh in. On 18 October 2023 the District Court of Limburg (ECLI:NL:RBLIM:2023:6456) had an expert calculate the average daylight factor per room and called both sunlight and that daylight factor “generally accepted methods” for assessing the deprivation of light. The court established unlawful nuisance on the basis of both the reduction in sunlight and the drop in the daylight factor.

This does not stand alone. On 2 June 2025 the District Court of Northern Netherlands (ECLI:NL:RBNNE:2025:2378) imposed a construction stop in summary proceedings because the daylight access after an extension would drop below the recommended value of NEN-EN 17037; the court considered that standard usable, even though it is not yet incorporated into legislation. And on 26 July 2024 the District Court of The Hague (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2024:11706) imposed a construction stop where the expert report showed a drop in the daylight factor of around 19%, alongside substantial sunlight loss.

Sun often remains the main anchor

Daylight is the second leg, not a replacement. The best-known anchor remains sunlight. On 17 January 2024 the District Court of The Hague (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2024:1206) ordered the demolition of a roof addition at 75 to 80% sunlight loss, even with an irrevocable permit. Reduced daylight access was mentioned there, but the decisive figure was the sunlight loss.

The practical lesson: you are strongest with sunlight and daylight together. A substantial sun loss makes the case; a demonstrable daylight loss strengthens it — certainly at a north-facing or side facade where the sun hours are already limited and the blocking of the sky is the real problem. A single piece of evidence that shows both is more convincing than a complaint based on gut feeling. Judges regularly dismiss claims that lack measurable substantiation.

What can you do about daylight loss caused by the neighbours?

Two routes are open, and they do not exclude each other. Which one you choose depends on the phase the construction is in and on your goal.

1. With the municipality: a formal view or objection. As long as the environmental permit is not yet irrevocable, you file a formal view (zienswijze, during the public-inspection period) or an objection (bezwaar, within six weeks of publication). Substantiate it with figures on sun and daylight loss; a municipality takes a number more seriously than a feeling.
2. Civil law: holding the neighbours liable. Even after the construction is completed, you can hold the neighbours liable before the civil court for unlawful nuisance (art. 5:37 in conjunction with art. 6:162 BW). The court can order modification, a construction stop or even demolition, and a permit offers no protection against that. The limitation period for nuisance is five years.

For both routes the substantiation is the same: a methodical report that shows, per measurement point, how much sun and sky light is lost, based on sources the court recognises. How the neighbour-law route works exactly is set out in a neighbour’s roof addition: when is shadow legally unlawful? The broader explanation of the rules is in sunlight, daylight and neighbour law: which rules apply?

How Schaduwplan supports this

Schaduwplan computes both legs. Enter the address of the planned or existing construction, draw the extension or roof addition based on the building drawings or as an existing 3DBAG volume, and place measurement points at your windows. Per test date you get the sun loss as a percentage, before and after the construction — exactly the type of figure the District Court of The Hague called decisive in January 2024.

The tool also shows, per window, a sky-view indication (Vertical Sky Component): how much sky the window still sees from the outside, before and after the construction. That is an additional, conservative measure of daylight loss — the second leg alongside sunlight. It is explicitly not the statutory daylight requirement from the Bbl, and not the indoor daylight factor that a court has an expert calculate; for that building-physics calculation a building-advisory firm remains the appropriate route. For the first, substantiated picture of what you stand to lose in sun and sky light, you compute it yourself in about five minutes, using the same open government data (3DBAG, BAG, AHN) that the Council of State also accepts.