Getting the Right #Pitched roofing

Here at Sentric Design we believe that roof is the key external feature of most houses. It is even more prominent than the windows, because it can be seen from a distance. If you get it wrong and the entire project could suffer the consequence. Here’s some advice on how to choose the right roof pitch for your house design.

Thatch is used occasionally on new dwellings and demands a roof pitch of at least 45°, and more likely 50°, to allow the rain to flow off quickly and prevent ingress. This steep pitch is also an essential ingredient of cottage style.

In some houses, the roof barely forms part of the design. This applies in so-called ‘flat’ (they usually have a very shallow pitch rather than actually being flat) roofed houses in contemporary style. It also occurs in many large Georgian houses, where low pitches are concealed behind parapets.

However, with most styles of house – even the shallow-pitched villas popular in Regency and early Victorian times – the roof dominates, must therefore look great and add significance values.

Speak to any architect that designs traditional- style houses and he or she will talk of roofs that are ‘satisfying’ or ‘not satisfying’. Talk to that same architect a little more and the chances are that the magic term ‘Golden Ratio’ will enter the conversation. It is a useful concept for most self-builders to be familiar with. With a pitched roof in a traditional house – especially if it is in Arts & Crafts style or a self-build that purports to be a ‘cottage’ – it is essential to have a steep pitch.

Nowadays many things militate against this. In general, the steeper the pitch, the more materials used, and so the more expensive it gets. Add a hip or two and the costs increase again. The other essential ingredient is the view of the planning officer. Designers are often asked to reduce the pitch of a roof by planners because it is considered to have too great an impact on the adjacent buildings.

“If you lower the pitch so that it becomes unsatisfying, the whole house can easily look wrong,” says traditional house designer and Arts & Crafts specialist Richard Cutler.

And it is here that the Golden Ratio comes in. Without going into the minutiae that are drilled into all students at architectural school, the Golden Ratio (a ratio of about 1:1.62) simply acts as a benchmark against which any architect that finds a design unsatisfactory can test his intuition.

To underline this, many house designers quote Sir Edwin Lutyens — probably the most famous of British architects, revered for the quality of his country houses. Lutyens hated 45° pitches. He referred to 45° as “the ugly angle”. Most traditional architects today will avoid that pitch when designing houses, and if you ask them why, a good number will say it’s because it does not conform to the Golden Ratio. A slightly steeper pitch will achieve a much more satisfying result. 

The roof on this American-style house in Sussex utilises sprockets to give a flared effect on the bottom of the eaves, changing the pitch — it’s also common on many traditional-style designs

Whilst most period house styles favour roof pitches in excess of 45° because it gives the roof more dominance in the overall elevation, this Georgian home has such a short rafter length – and the roof is partially hidden behind parapets – that the effect of its steep pitch is minimised 

The pitch of your roof will not just have an effect on the way the house looks. The lower the pitch, the greater the amount of water that the roof slopes will collect and discharge. As a result, the tiles must be able to cope, particularly at the lower end of the slope with the greater expected volume of water (and lower speed of water movement) without risk of leakage. 35° is considered to be the minimum for slate and clay, but if you do need to go below this, interlocking concrete tiles are the best option.

A 39° pitch is good for a Georgian style home, while a 51° pitch is perfect for an Arts & Crafts house.

Deciding on the correct roof pitch for your home very much depends on the style of house you are building or renovating and, to a lesser extent, your local area. In general terms, the more traditional the house, the steeper the pitch should be, with Victorian and Arts & Crafts designs (particularly those around the turn of the 20th century) being the steepest (at the right hand of the scale) and Georgian being the shallowest (often hidden by a parapet, and quite possibly hipped). The vernacular stone roofs of Yorkshire, for instance, demanded a shallower pitch. Much of the housing of the 20th century opted for shallower pitches to enjoy cost savings (at pitches as low as 22.5°) but the reigniting of interest in house design, coupled with the desire to make better use of roof space, has led to steeper pitches in recent years.