When a roof comes off, the covering is the one big decision that remains open. Everything else follows from the house: the pitch, the rafters and the layout are fixed. The covering is not, and it sets the appearance of the roof, its weight, its price and the way it weathers. There is no single best material for a new roof. The right one depends on four things: the building itself, the timbers that will carry the load, what you can spend, and whether the property sits under planning or heritage controls. This guide walks through slate, clay, concrete, natural stone and the lighter alternatives with those four tests in mind. It uses typical UK price ranges where a sourced one exists, and says clearly where none does. Prices are national bands from third-party guides, so they help you compare and do not stand in for a quote.
Four tests before you look at samples
Samples and brochures put the cart before the horse. Settle these four points first and the shortlist shrinks.
The house
Match the covering to the character of the building. A terrace of Georgian houses, a Victorian villa and a 1990s estate home each carry a different roof, and the new covering should sit comfortably with its neighbours. Our habit on older houses is to put back what was there: slate on a slate roof, stone on a stone one.
The structure
Every covering has a weight, and the timbers were sized for the original. A heavy covering on light rafters needs strengthening, and a very light one on an exposed site may need extra fixing. Weight is covered in its own section below.
The budget
The cheapest covering is not always the cheapest roof. Fixings, battens, underlay, lead and labour are part of every option, and a better covering lasts and looks better. Think in terms of cost over the life of the roof. The lifespans quoted below are typical figures from published sources, and exposure, workmanship and maintenance all move them, so none is a promise.
The rules
Listed houses and conservation areas limit what can go on, and Building Regulations apply to a full re-roof. Check early, because a change of material is the most likely source of a consent question.
If you are weighing a new roof against patching the old one, start with the warning signs of a roof at the end of its life, and return here once the decision to replace is made.
Natural slate: fine-grained and fixed for the long term
Slate is a metamorphic rock that splits into thin, flat sheets. It is hard, has low water absorption and keeps its colour, which is why it was used on so many older houses and why it still sets the benchmark for a durable covering.
Slate is the only covering here with a published installed rate. Per MyBuilder's 2026 slate guide, the typical UK band is £100 to £180 for each square metre laid. Welsh slate sits at the upper end, £140 to £180, while Spanish is £100 to £130, and the same guide puts a semi roofed in Spanish slate at £7,000 to £10,000. Quality differs between quarries and grades, so a low price should prompt a question about the source of the slate. On life, MyBuilder's 2026 guide has Welsh slate commonly lasting beyond 100 years and Spanish slate 75 to 100, and it cautions that slate fixed badly can be failing in under 10 years whatever its quality. We compare the two origins in our guide to Welsh and Spanish slate.
Slate is lighter than clay or concrete tiles of comparable coverage, because the slates are thin and laid with a close overlap. Even so, it is not light: on a roof built for tiles, the structure is checked first. Slate also demands skill. Each slate is nailed through two holes, the courses diminish towards the ridge on traditional roofs, and lead work at valleys and abutments is detailed by hand.
Where does slate suit? On Victorian and Georgian houses that were slated originally, and on steeper pitches. A Trust casework entry for a Grade I property in St James's Square notes Welsh natural slate on the main pitch, and some clay pantiles at the back. One house proves nothing about the city, but it shows how carefully older roofs were specified.
Clay tiles: plain tiles, pantiles and the colour of a weathered roof
Clay tiles are fired, so their colour runs right through the body and softens as the surface weathers. Plain tiles are small and laid with a double overlap, which gives a textured, slightly irregular surface and works well on steep roofs and hips. Pantiles are larger, with an S-shaped profile that interlocks along the sides, and they suit lower pitches. Clay has a long record on houses of every period. MyBuilder's 2026 guide gives clay plain tiles a typical life of 40 to 60 years, while Marley's guidance points to BRE figures giving a 60-year minimum life expectancy that could be significantly longer, so the sources disagree. Marley also gives its Lincoln clay pantile approximately 60 years.
In its Wellow appraisal, B&NES describes steeply pitched roofs of red clay tile, and notes that surviving Cotswold stone tiles there are rare and should be kept. The appraisal for Freshford and Sharpstone observes that clay tiles are common, that a notable number of houses keep their stone tiles, and that re-covering in concrete tile detracts markedly from the village. Those are villages south and south-east of Bath, but the lesson travels: where clay is the local material, a substitute is noticed.
No sourced installed rate for clay tiles is available to us, so we leave it unquoted. They are generally dearer than concrete and often cheaper than natural stone, and the range within clay is wide, from machine-made plain tiles to hand-made ones. Each is priced from the survey.
On the practical side, clay is heavy enough to need a sound roof structure, and it needs mechanical fixings at the ridge, hips and verge. BS 5534:2014 expects bedded tiles and fittings to be mechanically fixed, so a mortar bed alone is no longer treated as adequate. Reclaimed clay tiles are an option when matching an old roof: they carry the weathering that new ones lack, though supply and breakage make them a case-by-case decision. We cover the options in our answer on reusing old roof tiles.
Concrete tiles: practical, and sometimes the wrong look
Concrete tiles are a widespread covering on newer houses, and they remain a sensible choice on modern builds. They are made in large sizes, which means fewer pieces to lay, and they interlock at the sides. A roof of them goes on more quickly than one of small plain tiles, which is part of why they have been the lower-cost route.
Their weak points are weight and appearance. Concrete tiles are heavier than slate, and a roof built for slate or thin plain tiles may need strengthening before they can be used. In practice the threshold is 15 per cent: the Planning Portal says a new covering material making the roof covering 15 per cent or more heavier needs approval under the Building Regulations, and the structure is checked as well. Going from slate to concrete can cross it.
On the look, concrete has a flat, uniform face, and its colour surface wears off with time. On life, MyBuilder's 2026 guide gives concrete interlocking tiles 30 to 50 years and Marley around 60 years, though Marley adds that this is not a guarantee of longevity. It sits well on a house designed for it, and it sits poorly on a stone cottage or a period terrace. On a historic building it can change the look of the property, which is the kind of change a heritage body weighs carefully.
The guides behind this page publish no installed rate for concrete tiles, so we offer none. As a general principle, it is likely to be the lower-cost pitched covering, but the saving can narrow once underlay, battens, fixings and labour are included. Those are the same whichever tile goes on, which is why a cheaper tile moves the total less than people hope. For the full price breakdown see our guide to roof replacement cost.
Natural stone tiles and the heritage question
Stone tiles are split from limestone or sandstone and laid in graded courses, big stones low down and small ones near the top. They are the traditional covering on many older buildings in the Cotswolds and around Bath, and they are heavy: the timbers beneath them were sized accordingly and are often substantial. Re-laying them is slow, specialist work, because each stone is sorted by size and holed individually. One Oxfordshire firm of surveyors, Marshalls, says stone slates can easily last 100 years, though that is a single source.
That weight leads to a practical rule. If your roof is stone-tiled, the safest course is usually to keep the stone, relay what is sound, and top up with salvaged or new stone of the same type. Replacing it with a lighter covering may be cheaper to buy and may need less timber, but it changes the building and, on a listed house, it will need consent.
Heritage constraints are a real factor in this area. Bath is a World Heritage Site from boundary to boundary, with a conservation area that spans roughly half of the city. A listed house must have B&NES Council's consent before anyone touches the covering, and starting before it is granted is a criminal offence. For the Lambridge Place terrace, the Trust's preference was natural Welsh slate over the artificial slate then in use, which hints at the direction of travel: natural materials that match the original. We cover consent in detail in our guide to listed roof replacement.
Outside Bath, the rules depend on the council. Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire and Somerset have their own conservation areas and listed buildings, so ask the relevant planning team. In a conservation area, many like-for-like re-roofs raise no issue, though a change of material deserves a question to the planners before any order is placed.
Lightweight and alternative coverings
There are coverings beyond the traditional four, and they have their place. They are most useful where weight is a constraint or the roof shape is unusual.
Man-made slate, in fibre cement or resin, is lighter and more uniform than the natural article, and usually cheaper to buy, and it can be a reasonable choice on a modern house. Its colour can fade, and on a period property or in a conservation area it can read as a different material from the natural slate it replaces. For man-made slate MyBuilder's 2026 figure is 30 to 50 years of typical life, well short of good natural slate. We have no sourced installed rate for it, so it is priced from the survey.
Metal roofing, whether standing seam or profiled sheet, is light, durable and quick to lay on suitable pitches. It is common on barns, outbuildings and contemporary extensions, and it is increasingly used on houses, though it changes the character of a period building. MyBuilder's garage roof guide (2026) puts metal roofs at 40 to 70 years. Our answer on metal roofs on a house goes into what it involves and where it works.
Fibre cement and composite tiles imitate traditional profiles at a lower weight. They suit roofs where the structure cannot take a heavier covering, though they should be fixed and detailed to the maker's instructions.
For all of these, the surrounding parts do not change. The battens, underlay, ridge, hip, verge and lead details still need to be renewed or checked, and the quality of that work often decides how long the roof lasts more than the logo on the packaging. A cheaper covering on poor battens will not outlive a better one on good timber.
Weight, structure and Building Regulations
The question that links all of these coverings is weight. A roof's rafters, purlins and walls were designed for a particular load, and changing the covering changes it.
The Planning Portal ties approval to weight: a new covering material that makes the roof covering 15 per cent or more heavier needs it, and the Portal asks for thought about any covering much heavier or much lighter than the old. Repairs and re-covering normally need no approval only where less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof is affected, so a full re-roof passes those limits, and the roof may have to meet a thermal standard as part of the job. Approval is granted by B&NES building control, or by a registered building control approver in the private sector. Outside B&NES, the local council runs its own service.
We look at the structure at survey, and a heavier covering is flagged in the written scope, with the notification handled by us. The limits are explained in the Planning Portal's re-roofing guidance. To see when the covering decision falls within a job, read how a roof replacement runs.
Once the four tests are answered and the weight is understood, samples become a short conversation. After our free survey you get a written fixed price for the roof replacement, with a separate line for each covering you are weighing, so the difference in cost is clear before you choose.