Roofing in the United States

The United States has one of the largest roofing markets in the world, spanning climates from hurricane coasts and hail-prone plains to snowy mountains and deserts. Its roofing history runs from Indigenous earth, bark, plank and hide roofs, through Spanish, English, Dutch and French colonial traditions, to the mass-produced asphalt shingle and single-ply membrane that dominate today.

Practice is shaped by model building codes adopted state by state, by insurers, and by a contractor culture built around lightweight, quickly installed materials.

Climate and hazards

• Hurricanes on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, where roof uplift and water entry cause much of the damage (see hurricane-roof-damage).
• Hail across the Great Plains and Texas, driving demand for impact-rated coverings.
• Snow and ice in the northern states and mountains: snow loads, ventilation and eave protection against ice dams.
• Wildfire in the West, where fire-rated roof assemblies are increasingly required.
• Heat and sun in the South and Southwest, where reflective cool roofs are encouraged by energy codes.

Roofing history

Ancestral Puebloan roofs. In the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloan builders between about 750 and 1300 CE roofed rooms with round timber beams (vigas) carrying smaller poles (latillas), finished with brush and a gently sloped layer of earth. Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, built between about 850 and 1150 CE, still shows vigas or the sockets they left. Taos Pueblo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site occupied since the late 13th or early 14th century, keeps its adobe in repair by regular replastering (see viga-and-latilla-roof).

Bark, plank, earth and hide. In the Northeast, Haudenosaunee longhouses were framed with bent poles and sheathed in elm bark, with vents above the hearths (see longhouse-roof). On the Pacific Northwest coast, gabled and shed-roofed houses were covered with split cedar planks; a rectangular building at the Maurer site has been dated to between 2830 and 1920 BCE (see plank-house). On the Plains, Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Pawnee villages built domed earth lodges from the early 1500s, with a timber frame, thatch, and thick sod over the top, while mobile Plains peoples used the hide-covered tipi with two adjustable smoke flaps.

Colonial roofs. Early colonial houses in New England were framed heavily in the English way to carry slate or tile, but timber was plentiful and hand-split wood shingles soon became the normal covering: oak and white cedar in southern New England, eastern white pine further north. Slate was quarried in New England in the 1600s but rarely used until city fires after about 1800 led some towns to require it; quarrying then grew in Vermont, Maine and New York. Spanish colonial building introduced fired clay tile, a tradition still visible on roofs in the Southwest, Florida and California.

Industrial era. Imported sheet lead was available in the 17th century and sheet copper from the late 18th, both expensive. Tin-plated and then terne-coated iron and steel sheet were in common use by the mid-19th century, mainly on low-slope roofs, and stamped metal shingles appeared late in the century. On the treeless Great Plains of the 19th and early 20th centuries, settlers built sod houses whose earth roofs leaked badly in rain.

Asphalt. Asphalt-saturated felts arrived in the 1880s as roll roofing, then as individual shingles; by about 1915 three-tab strips were on sale, coloured to imitate wood or slate. By 1939 US production had reached about 11 million squares (see history-of-asphalt-shingles).

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Viga-and-latilla flat roof (Spanish viga, beam; latilla, lath), Southwest.
• Bark longhouse, Northeast; cedar plank house, Pacific Northwest.
• Earth lodge and tipi, Great Plains.
• Sod house ("soddy"), Great Plains settlers.
• Wood shingle and shake roofs of New England and later the Pacific Northwest, where western red cedar became the standard species and was shipped east by about 1900.
• Spanish clay tile in the Southwest, Florida and California.
• Pueblo Revival buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, which use vigas mainly as ornament.

Roofing today

Asphalt shingles are the most common covering on American houses because of low first cost and simple installation. Two main types are sold: thin three-tab shingles and thicker laminated "architectural" shingles. Other residential coverings include metal (standing seam and stamped panels), concrete and clay tile in the Sunbelt, wood shakes in the West, and slate in older Northeastern housing.

On large low-slope roofs, built-up roofing, modified bitumen and single-ply membranes are used; TPO had become the most popular commercial low-slope covering by 2016, alongside EPDM and PVC. The National Roofing Contractors Association treats roofs of 3:12 (about 14°) or less as low-slope.

The US Census Bureau's American Housing Survey asks about roof condition rather than material. Its 2023 data, as analysed by trade press, counted nearly 6 million households reporting roof leaks, 3.5 million with missing roofing material, 1.9 million with sagging roofs and 1.5 million with holes.

Codes, standards and regulation

Most states and cities adopt the International Residential Code and International Building Code, published by the International Code Council every three years since 2000, often with local amendments. Structural loads follow ASCE 7. Product standards are mainly ASTM and UL documents: ASTM D3462 for glass-mat asphalt shingles, ASTM D3161 and D7158 for wind resistance, and UL 2218 for impact resistance, where Class 4 is the highest rating.

Florida adopted a unified statewide code in 2002 after Hurricane Andrew (1992), with stricter High-Velocity Hurricane Zone rules in Miami-Dade and Broward counties (see miami-dade-noa and florida-product-approval). Voluntary programmes such as the IBHS FORTIFIED Roof go beyond code minimums. Roofing contractor licensing is set by individual states and varies widely.

Industry

The market is served by national shingle, membrane and metal manufacturers and by trade bodies including the National Roofing Contractors Association and the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau.

Notable roofs

• Taos Pueblo, New Mexico: multi-storey adobe complexes with earth roofs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon: surviving viga sockets from the 9th-12th centuries.
• Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe: a reconstructed building combining structural and ornamental vigas.

Local roofing terms

• Viga / latilla (Spanish): beam / lath in Southwestern flat roofs.
• Portal (Spanish): porch roofed with projecting vigas.
• Square: 100 ft² (9.29 m²) of roof, the unit used in ordering and pricing.
• Soddy: a sod house of the Plains.

Sources and gaps

The Census Bureau does not publish a national table of main roofing material for existing homes, so shares by material are not given.