Built to Last The 5 Best Roofing Materials to Top Off Your House

Built to Last: The 5 Best Roofing Materials to Top Off Your House

Updating your existing roof is one way to increase your home’s value and communicate its look and feel.

A healthy roof help protect your investment in your home, increase home value, and guards your home against costly hidden damage.

When updating an existing roof, most people look for materials that are sustainable, durable, and environmentally friendly.

Here are some of the best roofing materials for your house.

1. Rolled Roofing

For low-slope residential roofs and outhouses, rolled roofing is always the way to go. Rolled roofing consists of mineral integrated asphalt topped off with the coarse mineral granules.

These roofs are available in a hundred square feet sheets that are about three feet wide for only 1.50$ to 2.00$ per square feet.

Rolled roofing is excellent for more utilitarian buildings like workshops and warehouses. These roofing materials are easy to install with roofing nails or even by the torch-down method.

They are also very convenient and won’t exactly break the bank. The roofs work well for residential homes, with aesthetic being the only sacrifice.

2. Asphalt Composite Shingles

Asphalt composite shingles are the most widespread roofing materials across North America with a staggering seventy percent of homeowners using them as their preferred choice.

What makes asphalt composite shingles so popular is their wide range of attractive options and their sturdiness against the elements. They also fair well in house fires because of fiberglass’ fire resistant properties.

Most Asphalt composite shingles consist of a fiberglass base layered with asphalt and covered with granules for aesthetics. The organic variants of these roofing type, however, use a paper base instead of fiberglass.

These roofing materials will set you back about 1.50$ to 3.00$ per foot installed and will last for about 10 to 30 years.

3. Standing Seam Metal Roofs

If you need a new roof made of metal, you may want to consider settling on a standing seam roof.

As the name suggests, these roof types contain steel or aluminum panels raised in interlocking seams to prevent moisture from seeping in.

For this reason, standing seam metal roofs are excellent for areas with heavy snowfall to prevent any water leakages and areas prone to fire incidents, since metal is fully fireproof.

The downside to these roofs is the price tag of between 6$ to 12$ per square foot installed.

4. Metal Shingles or Shakes

Metal shingles are a great alternative to standing seam metal roofs. They offer the same advantages as the standing seam roofs but are more aesthetically pleasing.

Metal shingles and shakes are made from stamped aluminum or steel layered with a specially baked coating or mineral granules.

These roofs can be worked to look exactly like asphalt composite shingles which are well-loved for their beautiful finishes.

5. Clay Tiles

Clay tiles are expensive to purchase and install but could last well over a century in the right conditions.

Clay tiles are essential rolled clay molded into interlocking shapes and baked for hardness. They have a distinctive reddish-orange color but are sometimes glazed for a ceramic finish.

Clay tiles are excellent for areas along the coast with hot climates and salty air, since they won’t rust like metal roofs in the same conditions.

Splurging up to 30$ per square foot for clay tiles shouldn’t be a surprise; however, it could take over a hundred years to replace clay tiles.

Best Roofing Materials

If you are in the market for a new roof, you will certainly find many different types of roofing materials. However, not all will be ideal for topping off your house.

Always ensure that what you choose as your best roofing materials for residential is long lasting, cost-efficient, durable, and sustainable.

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