What photos of roof damage should you take for your insurer?

An insurer decides on evidence, often without seeing the damage in person. Advice from structural engineers is blunt about it: pictures are essential to a claim because they capture the damage at the moment you found it. A good set records what happened, when it was noticed and what state the roof was in. A poor set, or none, leaves the assessor guessing. Insurers differ on how they take evidence. Some ask for pictures through an online form, others by email, and a few send an assessor after the first look. Whatever the route, a set arranged by room and by area is easier to follow than a scattering of unlabelled phone images in one long camera roll, and ten minutes spent sorting them as you go saves a great deal of back and forth afterwards.

Photographs also protect you against later disputes. If the question is whether a storm caused the problem or age did, dated pictures of fresh breakages and a previously dry loft answer it better than any description. Take them as soon as it is safe, before the weather changes the scene, and before anybody carries out a temporary repair that covers up the evidence.

Start outside, standing on the ground. Take one wide shot of each elevation of the house so the whole roof is visible, then step closer for the damaged area. Take a few frames of the surrounding ground too, such as the path, the gutter line and the flower beds, because tiles and debris that landed there show where the damage began. If your phone has a zoom, use it on missing tiles, displaced ridge tiles, lifted lead or a leaning chimney. Binoculars help you spot detail you can then photograph through the zoom.

Photograph anything that fell: tiles on the lawn, a broken gutter, a fence panel, a branch. Include a neighbouring object for scale where you can. If a tree is involved, show where it stood and how it landed. Never climb a ladder or step onto the roof, however close the camera would get you to the fault. Our page on checking a roof after a storm explains what you can safely see from outside, and the emergency roof repairs hub lists the other guides.

Inside, photograph the ceiling stain from a few paces back, then closer, with something in the frame to show its size. Capture drips in progress, buckets and any damp or peeling paint. If water has reached carpets, furniture or electrical items, photograph those too, but keep away from wet wiring.

If the hatch can be reached without stretching, photograph the underside of the roof: dark patches on rafters, wet insulation, light showing through the covering, and any drip points. Use the phone's flash or a torch, and photograph from the hatch rather than stepping across the joists, since a foot placed between them can go through the ceiling below. Keep clear of any ceiling that is bulging. Our guide on checking the loft for a roof leak shows what to look for and what to stay away from, and which jobs belong to a roofer.

Most phones record the date and time automatically in the file details. Leave that data intact rather than editing or heavily compressing the pictures. Keep the originals on the phone and copy them to a computer or cloud folder so nothing is lost. Number the images in the order you took them, with a short note for each, such as the location and what it shows.

Write down the date the leak first appeared, the weather at the time and the date you contacted the insurer. Keep receipts for emergency work, as Which? advises, since they form part of the claim. If something must be thrown away because it is a health risk, photograph it first. The few minutes this takes are the most useful part of the whole process, and the pictures cost nothing.

A roofer can reach places you cannot, and a survey adds close-up pictures of the fault, taken safely. When JJ Roofing surveys a roof, each problem area is photographed and written up with what caused it. That record gives an assessor a trained account of the cause, which is the central question in many claims.

The insurer makes the decision. What we provide is pictures and a written account that are clear and independent, together with a quote at one total price. Send us what you have taken so far and we will tell you what else is worth capturing. If cover has to be fitted first, the pictures go on before the temporary repair, not after it, because once the damage is covered the evidence is hidden. Ring or message with the details and we will advise.