You get three quotes for a new roof. One is for architectural shingles and it is the cheapest by a wide margin. One is for standing seam metal at about twice that. The third roofer wants to know whether you mean concrete or clay tile before he’ll give you a number at all. Nobody handed you a roofing materials comparison, just three prices and a feeling that one of them will need doing again.
Here is the short version for Florida. Shingles are the cheapest roof and the shortest-lived one. Metal is light and holds up in wind. Concrete tile is a real 30-to-50-year roof that fades. Clay is priced about where metal is and, installed correctly, is the one roof of the four you can reasonably expect to outlive you.
Which one is right comes down to two questions. How long do you want this roof to last? And what will your roof structure carry?
We make clay tile, so read what follows knowing that. We have also answered enough Florida homeowners to know exactly where each material gives out.
What the code requires of all four
Every roof covering sold in Florida has to carry a product approval showing it was tested to the Florida Building Code, currently the 8th Edition (2023). Outside the High Velocity Hurricane Zone, that is a Florida Product Approval, the FL number your permit reviewer looks up. Inside the HVHZ, which the code defines as Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the product needs a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance, and a current NOA is accepted anywhere else in the state as well.
Clay tile has its own material standard on top of that, ASTM C1167, and clay and concrete tile in Florida install to the FRSA/TRI Florida High Wind Concrete and Clay Tile Installation Manual, now in its 7th Edition. That manual is where the fastening patterns, adhesive requirements, and perimeter rules come from. The code allows tile on slopes as low as 2.5 in 12, with two layers of underlayment required up to 4 in 12.
Tecno and Plasma both carry current Miami-Dade NOAs (Miami-Dade County, Florida NOA No. 25-0410.06 and NOA No. 25-0410.05, both expiring 06/01/28), tested to ASTM C1167 Grade 1, TAS 100, TAS 101, and TAS 102. If your house is anywhere in Florida, that is the higher bar cleared.
Wind
The code sets the floor. What differs between materials is how each one loses when it loses.
Shingles fail at the seal strip. Once the adhesive lets go, a strong gust can lift a course and the one behind it. The blue tarps you see after a storm are mostly shingle roofs.
Standing seam metal is held with concealed clips, so the wind has less to grab. Failures usually start at an eave or rake where the trim wasn’t fastened to spec. When a metal roof does go, it leaves as a sheet.
Tile is heavy and interlocking, and on new installs it is screwed or foam-adhered to the deck rather than set in mortar. The weight and the mechanical attachment are why a tile field stays put in the kind of wind that strips shingles. The weak point in a hurricane is debris. A branch at 100 mph will crack a tile, usually a cut piece at a hip or rake where the tile is thinnest. That same branch goes through a shingle roof and dents metal. Cracked tiles are a repair. A stripped shingle roof is a replacement.
Weight, heat, and what’s under the tile
Tile is the heaviest of the four materials, and that is the first question a roofer will ask about your house. A Tecno barrel tile is 3.8 kg and lays at 12 tiles per square meter, which works out to about 9.3 pounds per square foot installed. Shingles and metal are a fraction of that.
If your house was framed for shingles, tile needs a structural review before anyone quotes it. Many Florida homes built to the current code were engineered for tile loads. An older frame house may not have been, and reinforcing trusses is a real line item. It is also a one-time cost that buys you a roof structure you never have to think about again.
The weight buys you something else. Tile is laid on battens with an air gap under it, 3 to 5 cm in our installation guide, and a barrel tile’s shape turns each row into a channel that moves air from eave to ridge. That gap, more than the material, is why tile attics run cooler than shingle attics with the same insulation. Shingles sit flat on the underlayment. On most installs, metal does too.
Clay and concrete behave about the same here. The difference between them is what they look like in twenty years.
Color, and why people switch from concrete to clay
Concrete tile is gray cement with color either mixed through the body or applied as a slurry on top. Slurry-coated tile fades in Florida sun, and once the surface erodes it holds algae and never quite cleans up. Through-body concrete holds better and still lightens.
Shingles have the same problem in a different form. The shaded slope streaks with algae, and the granules that carry the color wear off into the gutters until the mat underneath shows.
Clay is fired, and the color is the color. A natural red clay roof installed decades ago and one installed this year look the same from the street. Of all the reasons homeowners who have owned concrete tile choose clay the second time, that one comes up most. Not lifespan. They are tired of a roof that looks older than the house.
How long each one lasts
Florida shortens everything. Shingles here are a roof you will replace, more than once if you stay long enough. Metal lasts as long as its finish does. Concrete tile lasts as long as its surface does. Clay tile has no finish and no surface coating to wear through, which is why the oldest roofs in Portugal are clay and why our company has been making them since 1927.
The tile itself is rarely why a tile roof gets replaced. The underlayment is. Under an older tile roof you’ll usually find hot-mopped felt, and when it gives out the tiles on top may look fine. The job becomes a lift-and-relay, and in practice a good share of the old tile breaks coming up and the color has been discontinued, so you buy new anyway.
Ask any tile quote to spell out the underlayment. A self-adhered high-temperature membrane under the battens is the difference between a 25-year system and a 50-year one, and it is the cheapest upgrade on the sheet. With clay on top of it, the underlayment is the only part of the roof with an expiration date.
One more spec worth knowing: Tecno needs a minimum roof pitch of 21 degrees, about 4.5 in 12, per our installation guide. That is steeper than the code minimum for tile, and it is on purpose. A steeper pitch sheds water faster and dries faster, and a dry tile roof is a long-lived one.
Insurance
Florida Statute 627.7011 says an insurer may not refuse to issue or renew a homeowner’s policy solely because of roof age if the roof is less than 15 years old. Once a roof hits 15, the insurer can require an inspection, and the homeowner keeps coverage only if an authorized inspector finds at least five years of useful life remaining. That rule is written for shingles. A 15-year-old shingle roof in Florida is the reason the rule exists, and plenty of homeowners have replaced one to keep a policy. A 15-year-old clay roof is still early in its life, and an inspection is a formality.
On the wind mitigation form, the OIR-B1-1802, the roof covering question gives credit for a covering with an FBC or Miami-Dade product approval, or a permit dated after March 1, 2002. Any new roof of the four qualifies, so the covering line itself won’t separate them. The years you go without re-roofing will.
What it costs
Most people assume clay sits at the top of the price list by a wide margin. It doesn’t. Tecno and Plasma are priced in line with standing seam metal. Clay and metal land in roughly the same price range. The difference is what you get for it.
For roughly the same money as a metal roof, clay gives you a roof that doesn’t dent, doesn’t oil-can, doesn’t need its finish warranty read closely, and looks the same decades in as it did the day it went on. Against shingles, the math is simpler. A shingle roof replaced again and again, each time with a tear-off, a permit, and a round of insurance paperwork, costs more over the life of the house than one clay roof and delivers a worse-looking house for most of those years. Clay is the roof you buy once.
If you’re planning to stay, get the structural question answered before you collect quotes, and when the tile quotes come in, read the underlayment line before the tile line. Those two things decide more about how this roof turns out than anything else on the page. If you’re planning to sell, a clay roof is one of the few upgrades a buyer can see from the curb, and it is the one their insurer won’t ask about. Reading about clay versus concrete tile and how long tile roofs last in Florida will fill in the rest.
You can request a Tecno or Plasma sample from us, or find a contractor who has installed them.