The cost guide
What a new roof costs
Here’s the honest version: any figure quoted before someone has seen your roof is marketing. What we can give you is better: the exact things that move the price, and the checklist that keeps every quote you collect honest.
Call now
The quickest way to a straight answer about your roof, and if water’s coming in, always start here.
Call 020 4652 1477Text us a photo
Snap the problem from the ground and text it with your postcode. You’ll get a straight answer about what happens next.
Text a photoThe straight answer
Why there’s no honest number at the top of this page
Every “new roof cost” article opens with a figure, and every roofer knows that figure is fiction, because the same three-bed semi can price a long way apart depending on pitch, tile, access, and what a century of weather has done to the timber underneath.
So this page does the two things a real number depends on: it shows you what actually moves the price, and it gives you the itemised-quote checklist: the tool that makes any roofer’s price, ours included, safe to compare and hard to inflate.
When you want the real figure for your actual roof, that takes a roof check: eyes on the tiles, the felt, the loft. Then the price arrives in writing, itemised against everything below.
Use this page to
- See what genuinely drives roofing prices
- Read any quote line-by-line with confidence
- Spot a padded, vague or bait quote instantly
- Get a real, written price for your own roof
What moves the number
The seven things that decide what your roof costs
1. Size and pitch
Roof area, not floor area: a steep pitch holds far more roof than the footprint suggests, takes more material and slows every hour of labour.
2. The covering
Machine-made concrete tile, clay, man-made slate and natural slate climb the price ladder in roughly that order, with lifespan and looks climbing alongside.
3. Scaffold
A full re-roof needs proper access on every worked face. Terraced front-and-back, a detached wrap-around and a bungalow tower are very different bills.
4. Junctions and features
Hips, valleys, dormers, chimneys and rooflights each add cutting, leadwork and hours. A plain gable-to-gable roof is the cheapest shape there is.
5. What strip-off finds
Rotten battens, tired rafters, crumbling torching, invisible until tiles lift. Honest quotes carry a stated timber contingency; dishonest ones “find” it mid-job.
6. Waste
A whole roof’s tiles, battens and felt has to leave site legitimately. It’s a real cost on every job, in the quote from the start or added later, but never absent.
7. Where the house is
Parking, conservation-area material rules, how far materials travel and how hard your street is to work in all leave fingerprints on the price.
The checklist
What a roofing quote must itemise
Take this to every quote you collect, whoever it’s from. A fair roofer covers all of it without being asked; a vague quote goes vague exactly where it plans to grow.
- The covering by name: maker, model, colour, not “tiles”
- Membrane and battens: throughout, and what spec
- Scaffold as its own line, with its duration
- Strip-off and waste removal stated
- Leadwork: which flashings, renewed or reused
- Ridge and hip method, bedded or dry-fixed
- Timber contingency: the rate, before it’s needed
- Stage payments tied to visible progress
- What’s covered afterwards, in writing
- A completion date and what happens if weather moves it
Real numbers
A fixed price needs a roof check
That’s the bridge between this page and your actual roof: we come and look properly, then the price arrives itemised against the checklist above, in writing, before you decide anything. If a repair would honestly do, that’s what the paper will say.
Two ways to get a price
Pick whichever suits the job
Repairs and leaks move fastest from a photo. New roofs and bigger jobs need eyes on the roof first, a fixed price needs a roof check.
The photo route
- Snap it. The leak, the tiles, the gutter, whatever’s wrong, from the ground is fine.
- Send it by text or WhatsApp, with your postcode.
- Get an answer. What it looks like, what we’d do, and what happens next, in writing.
The roof-check route
- Postcode. Check we cover you, takes two seconds.
- Pick a time. Tell us the days that suit; we confirm the slot.
- We turn up and look properly. Scope and price follow in writing.
Questions
Straight answers
Why won’t roofers give a price over the phone?
Because the two biggest cost drivers, the roof’s true size and what’s hiding under the tiles, can’t be seen from the kerb, let alone down a phone line. A firm number without a survey is either padded to cover the unknown or bait that grows later. A fixed price needs a roof check.
How should I compare two roofing quotes?
Line by line, never bottom line against bottom line. Same tile, by name? Scaffold included in both? Waste? Membrane and battens throughout, or “where needed”? A stated timber contingency, or silence? The cheapest total is often the quote that’s quietly missing lines, which you buy again later as extras.
What are the red flags in a roofing quote?
A price produced on the doorstep before anyone measured anything. A total that drops the moment you hesitate. “Tiles” with no manufacturer or name. No mention of waste, scaffold or what happens if timbers are rotten. Pressure to decide today. And nothing in writing. If the quote only exists out loud, so does the comeback.
Does a re-roof include the timbers underneath?
The visible work, membrane, battens, covering, yes, and our re-roofing work in Croydon is quoted that way as standard. The rafters themselves only get touched if they need it, which nobody can promise until strip-off. An honest quote handles that by stating a contingency and the rate for timber repairs up front, so the surprise has a price before it’s found.
How do payments usually work?
For us: a deposit of 20 to 25% to book, stage payments tied to visible progress, scaffold up, mid-fix, completion, and every stage stated in the written quote before you commit. Be careful with anyone wanting most of the money before most of the work.
Stop guessing. Get it in writing
Book the roof check and get a real figure for your real roof, itemised line by line against the checklist on this page.