How do you match old roof tiles?

A match starts with the tile in your hand, not a catalogue photograph. Take one broken or spare tile and look at four things. First, the type: a small flat plain tile, a curved pantile, or a larger interlocking tile with grooves along its edges. Second, the material, clay or concrete, because they age differently and a clay roof patched with concrete shows from the road. Third, the size and thickness, measured across and down. Fourth, the surface: smooth, sand-faced or lightly textured, and whether the tile has nibs, peg holes or both.

Pictures of the whole roof help as well, taken from the garden and from inside the loft. At survey we photograph every slope, and the pictures travel with your quote. If a spare tile from the original build is lying in the garage or the loft, keep hold of it. It is the best sample you will ever get, and it beats a guess made from the pavement.

Reclaimed tiles come off other roofs and are sold through salvage yards. Their big advantage is that they have already weathered, so colour and surface sit close to a roof that has stood for many years. Their limits are real too. A reclaimed batch is mixed in condition, some tiles have tired nibs or hairline cracks, and every one has to be sorted by hand before it goes up. A tile that rings dull when tapped, or shows a crack against the light, stays on the ground.

Published life figures do not suit every old roof. One building conservation article warns that the 60-year figure for clay cannot be trusted when the roof is an old peg-tile one. BSI adds that parts of BS 5534 might be a poor fit when you re-tile a veteran roof with traditional or reclaimed stock. The sensible reading is that each roof needs judging on its own evidence, and a roofer should tell you which tiles are worth keeping.

There are two sound ways to blend. The first keeps the front slope entirely original. We lift the sound tiles from the rear slope, lay them across the front, and cover the rear with new or reclaimed tiles that nobody sees from the street. The second scatters the replacements through the slope in a loose, uneven pattern, so no patch reads as a block of a different colour.

The thing to avoid is a neat square of bright new tiles in the middle of a weathered slope. It looks like a plaster on a sleeve and stays that way for years. Moss, lichen and sun dull new tiles gradually, so a patch that looks sharp this winter usually softens over a few seasons. At survey we say which approach suits your roof. If only one or two tiles have gone, our answer on cracked roof tiles explains when they can be swapped singly.

Where a street lies in a conservation area, the roofing material is part of what the council protects. Arun District Council's guidance on The Steyne and Waterloo Square in Bognor Regis wants slate or plain clay put back wherever modern replacements have gone on. For Aldwick Road, it notes how often slate roofs there have been re-covered in concrete interlocking tiles, a swap that the document treats as a loss to the terraces.

In those streets, then, a good match may mean going back toward the original covering, not copying the later one. Ring the planning department at Arun District Council before ordering any tiles. If the building is listed, say so, because listed building consent may be needed even for a repair that looks minor. Our guide to changing tiles in a conservation area lists the questions to put to the council, and our pitched roofing service page covers tiled roofs more widely.

Matching rarely changes the labour by much. It changes the supply. Rare or reclaimed tiles can take longer to track down, and a roof needing a whole slope of one old pattern costs more than the same job in a common modern tile. Checkatrade's roof repair guide, updated in October 2026, gives typical UK repair costs per square metre of £90 to £120 for concrete, £110 to £160 for clay and £150 to £220 for natural slate, all exclusive of VAT.

Treat those as a rough guide only. Access, the number of tiles involved and the scarcity of the match decide the real figure, and the survey has to come first. A written quote follows, giving one total. From any firm, find out whether VAT and scaffold are included in the sum. Should a handful of tiles be enough, we will recommend exactly that, and where the whole covering is tired, repairing or replacing a tiled roof explains how the call gets made.