Matching old clay tiles on a Stroud roof repair

Four things decide whether a repair is visible from the road. The first is size, because old plain tiles were often made to local dimensions that differ slightly from modern standard tiles. The second is colour, which in clay comes from the clay itself and the firing, and then changes under decades of weather and lichen. The third is the camber, the gentle curve across and along the tile, which gives a hand-made roof its soft ripple. The fourth is surface texture and thickness.

A modern machine-made tile in a close shade can look flat and uniform next to a roof that has aged for a century. That contrast is most obvious on a plain, uninterrupted slope seen from the front. On a back slope, partly hidden by trees or a neighbouring roof, it can be hard to notice. We photograph the existing tiles in daylight and measure a sample before ordering anything. Take a spare from a garage roof or a ridge if one is lying around: a genuine tile from your own roof is the best reference there is.

Small differences add up. A tile that is a few millimetres short changes the gauge, and a slightly different thickness leaves a visible shadow line along the edge of the patch. Even if the colour is spot on, a repair in which the size is wrong will show up as a patch.

Reclaimed clay tiles come from demolished or re-roofed buildings, usually through a reclamation yard or a merchant. They already carry the weathering that new tiles lack, which is why they blend well. The trade-off is condition. A reclaimed tile may be frost-damaged, laminated, nail-sick or simply too thin to be reused, so each one needs sorting before it goes on a roof. Tiles from a source with a known history are generally safer than a random mixed pile.

What to look at

Hold a tile up and tap it: a sound clay tile rings, and a cracked one sounds dull. Check the nibs, which must be intact, and the edges for flaking. Check that quantity and variation are enough for the whole slope, because mixing batches can create bands of colour. Allow for some losses when stripping and sorting. We give no loss rate, because it depends on the roof. A reclaim yard can also tell you where its tiles came from, and that history helps you judge whether they were frost-damaged before.

Where reclaimed tiles are scarce, new handmade clay tiles are the other route. Handmade tiles are formed one by one, so they carry the slight irregularities of an old roof, and many makers offer blends of colour to resemble weathered clay. They are generally costlier than machine-made tiles, and weathering takes years, so a new patch can look bright at first.

One way to soften this is blending: laying new tiles in the middle of a slope rather than as an obvious rectangle, and mixing them with sound old tiles in the surrounding courses. Checkatrade's 2026 cost guide puts clay tile repair at £110 to £160 per m² before VAT and access, against £90 to £120 for concrete. Those are national ranges. After the survey our own quote covers tiles, labour and scaffold, so the cost of a careful match is clear.

Do not switch to concrete to match clay. The profile, weight and colour will differ, and a tile 15% heavier or more than the original needs a structural check, as our answer on concrete tiles on an old roof explains.

A common roofer's solution is to move tiles around. When a roof is stripped for repair, the sound tiles are sorted by condition and colour, and the best of them are relaid on the front slope, which people see from the street. The new or less handsome tiles go on the back or on a slope hidden from the road. The overall roof stays coherent from every angle that matters.

On a house with front and rear slopes of equal visibility, such as a semi on a corner, we discuss the split with you before work starts and show the options in the survey photographs. In a conservation area, planners may care how the front elevation reads. Our answer on tiled roofs in listed and conservation-area homes covers the consent rules, which are a separate question.

Lifting old tiles often shows what lies beneath: brittle underlay, rusted nails and battens softened by decades of damp. Reusing good old tiles on weak battens is false economy, because the timber fails before the tile does. Our answer on rotten roof battens explains what we look for.

We plan for this in the quote. The survey lists the likely items, scaffold, strip, sort, new battens and underlay where needed, the tiles, labour, waste and making good. On a roof of old clay we begin with clay of the same type and aim to match it as closely as supply allows. The repair carries a 10-year workmanship guarantee in writing, and the offcuts and broken tiles go with us. See our pitched roofing page for the wider service.