New Roof Cost UK 2026: What You'll Pay by House Type

Look up what a new roof costs and you get answers between £3,500 and £22,000. That is not sloppy research. Both ends of that spread are accurate, and they describe real jobs on real houses.

The gap exists because almost every new roof cost guide prices by bedrooms, and a roofer prices by square metres and material. A three-bedroom semi with concrete tiles and a three-bedroom semi with natural slate are the same house and nearly double the bill.

What's New in New Roof Costs for 2026

The spread between materials has widened rather than the whole market moving together. Concrete tile work still starts around £80 per square metre in 2026 guides, while natural slate runs to £200. That is a bigger gap than the same guides showed a year or two back, and it means material choice now moves the total more than almost anything else you decide.

Strip-out is also being itemised more often. Taking the old covering off and getting rid of it costs £900 to £2,500, and firms increasingly show it as its own line rather than folding it into a single figure. That is good for you, because it is the line most often missing from a quote that looks unusually cheap.

Day rates have held. Roofers are quoted at £200 to £300 per person per day across the 2026 guides.

What a New Roof Cost Really Averages in 2026

Four published averages, all from 2026 sources:

• £5,250 according to MyJobQuote
• £5,500 to £7,000 for a standard pitched roof according to MyBuilder
• £7,000 as a national average according to Fix My Roof
• £13,000 according to Checkatrade

Checkatrade's number is more than double MyJobQuote's. Neither is wrong. They are counting different houses. A dataset weighted towards bungalows and terraces produces a low average. One weighted towards detached properties with hips and valleys produces a high one.

The bands are more honest than the averages. Alliance Roofing puts most homes at £4,000 to £15,000. Best Builders and MyBuilder both land on £5,000 to £12,000. Fix My Roof gives £4,500 to over £20,000 and says most people spend £4,000 to £19,000.

So £5,000 to £12,000 covers the majority of UK re-roofs, and anything outside it usually has a reason you can name.

New Roof Cost by House Type: £3,500 to £22,000

House type gives you a starting bracket. Treat it as that and nothing more.

• Mid-terraced, 40 to 50 square metres: £3,500 to £6,000, averaging about £4,500
• End-terraced, 50 to 60 square metres: £4,000 to £7,000, averaging about £5,200
• Bungalow, 50 to 80 square metres: £4,000 to £7,500, averaging about £5,500
• Semi-detached, 55 to 70 square metres: £5,000 to £8,000, averaging about £6,500
• Detached three-bed, 70 to 90 square metres: £7,000 to £12,000, averaging about £9,000
• Detached four-bed and up, 90 to 130 square metres: £10,000 to £18,000, averaging about £13,000

Notice what is doing the work in that list. It is not the number of bedrooms. It is the square metre figure sitting next to each one.

Roof shape matters too, and it is the thing people forget. A hip roof covering roughly 64 square metres runs £9,250 to £18,000. A gable roof of the same area runs £7,000 to £16,250. Same floor area, same house, and the hip costs more because it has more edges, more cutting and more detail work.

Why One Guide Says £6,500 and Another Says £15,000

Here is the disagreement in the open. For a three-bedroom semi, Fix My Roof quotes £10,000 to £15,000. Best Builders quotes £6,500 to £11,500. Both are 2026 UK sources and both are describing a strip and retile.

They differ because Best Builders is pricing concrete tile on about 70 square metres, and a £15,000 figure assumes either a bigger roof or a better material. Neither guide is lying to you. They are answering slightly different questions and both call it "a semi".

That is why the only reliable way to sanity-check a quote is to work from two numbers:

Your roof area. Not your floor area. A pitched roof is larger than the footprint beneath it, and the steeper the pitch the bigger the difference. A 60 square metre roof on a two-bed terrace is a real measurement a roofer can quote against.

Your material. Concrete, clay or slate changes the price per square metre by a factor of two or more.

Multiply those together and you are within range of a genuine quote. Compare that against what you have been given.

Roof Material Prices per Square Metre in 2026

Installed prices, covering both materials and labour:

• Felt or flat roof systems: £50 to £90 per square metre
• Concrete tiles: £80 to £120 per square metre
• Clay tiles: £100 to £150 per square metre
• Natural slate: £120 to £200 per square metre

Checkatrade prices supply and fit a little higher: £120 to £230 per square metre for plain concrete tiles, £160 to £275 for clay, and £160 to £275 for natural slate. Rubber comes in at £80 to £100 and flat roof systems at £50 to £110.

Other sources land lower again. Less.co.uk puts concrete at £55 to £85 per square metre and slate at £80 to £130. Alliance Roofing gives £90 to £115 for concrete installed.

The ordering never varies even when the numbers do. Concrete is always cheapest, clay sits in the middle, slate is always dearest. On a 70 square metre roof, moving from concrete to slate adds several thousand pounds before anything else about the job differs.

Labour on its own runs £50 to £130 per square metre, with Checkatrade averaging around £130. Day rates sit at £250 to £300 per roofer, though some 2026 sources quote £200.

Why Valleys Add £1,500 to a Gabled Roof

Roof shape is priced separately from roof area, and valleys are the reason.

A valley is where two roof slopes meet and run water into a shared channel. Every one of them means cutting tiles at an angle, lining the channel, and getting the detail right or it leaks. MyJobQuote's 2026 figures put the cost of that plainly:

• Gabled roof, no valleys: £3,250 to £3,750
• Gabled roof, two valleys: £4,750 to £5,250
• Hip roof, standard: £4,250 to £4,750
• Hip roof, two valleys: £5,750 to £6,250
• Gambrel roof: £6,000 to £9,500
• Mansard roof: £7,500 to £12,000

Two valleys add roughly £1,500 whether the roof is hipped or gabled. The premium is consistent because the extra work is the same in both cases.

This is worth knowing before you compare quotes with a neighbour. Two houses on one street can look identical from the front and differ by £2,000 because one has a rear extension that created a valley.

Mansard roofs sit in their own bracket. At £7,500 to £12,000 they cost more than most detached properties, because a mansard is closer to re-cladding a wall than covering a slope.

What 40m2 and 120m2 Roofs Cost, and Where You Live

Priced purely on area, ignoring house type:

• 40 to 50 square metres: £4,500 to £6,500
• 60 to 80 square metres: £7,000 to £10,000
• 90 to 120 square metres: £10,000 to £15,000
• 120 square metres and above: £14,000 to £20,000 and up

Location moves these. A standard pitched roof in the South East runs £100 to £130 per square metre for labour and materials together, at the upper end of the national spread. In central London the effect is sharper still: a flat roof replacement costing £4,000 elsewhere reaches £5,000 to £5,200 in zone 1 and 2 postcodes.

That is a 25 percent premium for the same roof, and it is worth factoring in before you decide a quote is high. It also cuts the other way. Away from the South East, the same job sits nearer the bottom of every range on this page.

The £900 to £2,500 Most Quotes Forget

Stripping the old roof off and taking it away costs £900 to £2,500. It is real work: the covering comes off, the battens usually come off with it, and several tonnes of material has to leave the site.

Two more items belong in the same category, because both are common and neither shows up until the roof is open:

Rotten timbers. Replacing damaged rafters or battens runs £400 to £1,800 depending on how much wood has gone. You cannot know this before the covering comes off, so a good quote tells you the rate rather than pretending it will not happen.

Scaffolding. £500 to £1,200 depending on the size of the house. On a re-roof this is unavoidable, so any quote without it is incomplete.

Add those three and you can be £2,000 to £5,000 above the headline tile price. That is the single most common reason a finished bill overshoots the quote people remember agreeing to.

What a 70m2 Semi Costs by Material and Time

The same three-bedroom semi, about 70 square metres, priced three ways:

• Concrete tile: £6,500 to £11,500, taking 5 to 7 days
• Clay tile: £9,500 to £15,500, taking 6 to 9 days
• Natural slate: £11,000 to £18,500, taking 7 to 10 days

A four-bed detached at around 110 square metres runs £11,500 to £22,000 and takes 8 to 12 days.

That is a £12,000 spread on one house, driven by a decision you make rather than one the roof makes for you. It is worth taking seriously for two reasons. Slate lasts a great deal longer than concrete, so the higher figure buys more years. And on many older properties, particularly in conservation areas, matching the original material is not a free choice at all.

Time matters as well. A job running 10 days rather than 5 means twice as long with scaffolding up and twice the disruption.