How long each roof type really lasts

About this photo

1The short version

Nobody picks a roof for how it looks from the street. You pick it for how many more Saturdays you want to spend up there in this lifetime. Three-tab asphalt shingles typically get replaced after 15 to 18 years; the thicker architectural kind runs 24 to 30. A whole asphalt roof averages out to about 25 years in practice. Standing-seam metal is built for 50 years and can push past 70. Slate is the outlier: 80 to 400 years depending on the quarry, with the flashing around it usually failing long before the stone does.

2The two or three ways people actually pick

Most homeowners buy asphalt because it's what the roofer already has on the truck and it's the cheapest to put up: three-tab if the house is a rental or about to sell, architectural if they're staying and want the shadow lines. People who plan to stay put, or who are tired of doing this every twenty years, go metal, and they usually mention the sound of rain within the first minute of the conversation. Slate and clay tile mostly show up on old houses that already have it, or on someone who found a reclaimed pallet and a mason who still knows the trade.

3What it takes, and what goes wrong

A standard asphalt tear-off and reroof is a two-to-four-day job for a crew, one very loud weekend for you, and a dumpster in the driveway the whole time. The classic asphalt mistake is a second layer nailed over the first instead of a tear-off, which saves a day now and costs you both roofs' worth of removal later. Concrete and synthetic tiles absorb more water than clay or slate and need resealing every 3 to 7 years or they start to fail from the inside. Slate and tile are heavy enough that some old rafters need an engineer's blessing before they go back on.

4The cost band

Asphalt is the budget option up front and the one you pay for again in twenty years; metal costs more to install but is cheaper over a fifty-year run because you're not doing it three times. This page does not quote a dollar figure per square foot: material and labor pricing on the open web comes almost entirely from contractor marketing, not a publisher this page will cite, and it moves too fast to pin to a static number responsibly. Get three local quotes the same week so you're comparing the same shingle mix and the same season.

5The first hour

The first hour of any reroof is the loudest: a crew on the roof pulling the old layer off with flat shovels, landing in the dumpster like a drumline warming up. By hour two the bare deck shows, which is the only time anyone can actually check it for soft spots. Everything after that is just rows.

Explore this area

Home

House

Garden

Farm