Retiling cost
How much does it cost to retile a roof?
Published figures for a whole roof run wide and the guides disagree. Below: each figure with its author and date, and what shapes a price on a real roof.
The short answer
Published guides put a whole roof at very different figures, and they are measuring different things. MyJobQuote gives an average new roof of around £5,250 in the UK. Which? Trusted Traders give £7,000 to £21,000 for an average three-bedroom house, excluding VAT, and expect prices at the upper end in the South East. Our own figure is a single written total, produced only once we have surveyed the roof.
4 min read · Part of Pitched roofing
Published figures for a whole roof
Three guides print a whole-roof figure, and each describes its roof differently, so no honest average of them exists. The table keeps each figure beside its house, its date and what the guide says about VAT, which is the detail that tends to get dropped when numbers are passed from one article to another. A figure with no house, date or VAT basis is close to useless for planning.
| Guide | Roof described | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Which? Trusted Traders, November 2025 | The whole roof of an average three-bedroom house | £7,000-£21,000, excluding VAT |
| HomeBuilding, 30 September 2025 | Three-bedroom semi with 65 m² of plain concrete tiles; labour, scaffolding and insulation counted | Between £10,000 and £15,000 |
| HomeBuilding, same page | The same semi roofed in Welsh slate | Might reach £18,000 |
| MyJobQuote, 3 November 2026 | Average new roof in the UK; no VAT basis stated | Around £5,250 |
HomeBuilding also notes that London and the South East pay higher labour rates, which sits comfortably beside the Which? warning about the top of its range. Our whole patch counts as South East, so read every range with that in mind, and treat the lower end as a starting point rather than a promise.
Smaller jobs and repair rates
If only part of the roof has failed, the real question is repair or retile, and published repair prices help you judge it. Which? Trusted Traders price a fix for one to six damaged tiles at £75-£400, a figure meant for a few tiles and not a slope. A leak at one flashing or a run of slipped tiles belongs here, while a roof past saving does not. MyJobQuote gives an average roof repair of around £650 in 2026, and its slate roof average comes out at around £7,800.
Checkatrade's repair rates run from £90 to £120 per m² for concrete tiles, £110 to £160 per m² for clay and £150 to £220 per m² for natural slate. The rates are worked out for areas up to 3 m², leave out VAT and access equipment, and so describe a patch, never a slope. Nobody should multiply them into a whole-roof figure, and we do not. Where a patch is sound we repair it, and our slipped tiles guide explains how that call is made, and what we look at to make it.
What decides where your roof lands in the range
Two houses of equal floor area can end up at opposite ends of a published range. Five things push a retile one way or the other:
- the size and shape of the slopes, including valleys, hips, chimneys and any dormers
- the covering chosen, since HomeBuilding's slate figure sits well above its concrete one
- how the battens and underlay look once the old tiles are lifted
- how much insulation the roof has to take on, explained below
- access to the roof, with scaffold included in our written quote and not charged on top
On insulation, AD L 2021 para 11.3 wants the entire roof upgraded once over 50% of its surface counts as renovated. Table 4.3 lists 0.35 W/m²K as the threshold and 0.16 W/m²K as the improved figure for a roof, and a U-value simply measures how quickly heat passes through. A larger retile can therefore bring insulation work with it, which is one more reason a retile cannot be priced from a rate. The survey shows whether your job would cross that line.
Why the price follows the survey
A retile estimate made without looking at the roof is a guess dressed up as a figure. The survey measures the slopes, checks the timbers from the loft and records what lies beneath the tiles, so the written total is built on what the roof needs and not on a guess about it. After that, a single written total covers the whole job, with nothing held back to be added for parts you could not see from the ground.
The survey also settles whether this is a retile at all. A new covering 15 per cent or more heavier needs Building Regulations approval, while a re-roof affecting less than 25 per cent of the building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof normally stays outside an application under the Planning Portal test. Our page on clay against concrete tiles covers the weight question in more detail, and the pitched roofing page, which links every question we have answered on tiled roofs, describes the whole job from first visit to clean-up, with the site left tidy and no loose ends for you to chase afterwards.
More questions
Does the retiling price include scaffolding?
Scaffold is part of the written quote, so no extra sum turns up once work begins. A scaffold that must stand on the highway needs a licence, and we arrange the licence with our scaffolder. Which? lists scaffolding costs among the things its final price depends on, and MyJobQuote's roof replacement tables leave scaffolding hire out, so check what any quote you compare has included.
Can I estimate my roof from a price per square metre?
Not safely. A per m² rate is built for a small repair of up to 3 m² and cannot be stretched across a whole slope. A real roof also has hips, valleys and chimneys that no rate accounts for, and the battens may need renewing, which only shows once the tiles come off. A survey replaces the guesswork.
Tell us what's wrong with the roof.
You'll get one written total price.