Can Dry Ridge Match Your Existing Tiles?

People worry that a dry ridge will look like a plastic strip along the top of the house. It does not, if it is fitted well. Most of the system is out of sight. The batten or brackets that carry the tiles sit below them, and so does the ventilated strip that keeps rain out of the joint. From the ground the eye picks up only the ridge tiles themselves and the ends.

Which dry ridge parts are visible?

The tiles are the largest visible part, so their colour and shape decide the look. The end caps at a gable are the next, because they sit at the very edge of the run where you can see them against the sky. The joints between tiles show as thin lines. Where the kit includes plastic unions at hip junctions, a roofer picks a colour that sits close to the roof, and fits the pieces so that little of the plastic shows past the tile edge. The strip beneath is coloured too, usually in a dark shade that disappears into the shadow under the tile.

Sound ridge tiles can frequently be refitted. The old mortar is chipped away, the tiles cleaned, and the same units are set on the new batten and fixed down. This keeps the colour exactly right, because it is the same material that has weathered with the rest of the roof. It also saves buying new tiles.

When can the old tiles not be reused?

If they are cracked, chipped along the edges where they sat in mortar, or an unusual shape that the kit cannot clamp, they have to be replaced. Mortar sometimes stains a tile, and some old clay ridges have a worn glaze that cleans up poorly. A sound ridge tile has to fit the fixing, too. Dry systems are made for particular profiles, such as half-round, angled or ornate, and a kit that suits one profile will not hold another properly.

If some tiles have to be new, a roofer can mix them in with the old, keeping the newest units to the rear slope, where nobody looks. The reused tiles go along the front, where the colour matters most.

New tiles of the same profile may come in a colour that is close without being exact. Concrete and clay both change over time: the surface weathers, the colour mellows, and moss or lichen can settle on it. A new unit set beside old ones usually looks brighter for a while. The gap narrows with time, though rarely closes completely.

Can a ridge match tiles that are no longer made?

Sometimes. Reclaimed tiles from a salvage yard or from another roof can match an older profile far better than a modern near-match. The maker's colour range is the next place to look, and a roofer holds a sample against the existing roof in daylight before ordering, because colours shift under cloud and bright sun. On some tile ranges the ridge is sold in a matching colour to the main tile, and that is the simplest way to a good result.

Photographs of your ridge from the garden, plus any spare tile kept in the garage or shed, help narrow the match before the survey even starts. A few leftover tiles from the original build are the best colour sample there is, because they have aged alongside the roof.

Where a home is listed, or stands inside a conservation area, how the roof looks is more than a matter of taste. Class C of the permitted development rules normally covers a change of roof covering on a house, and a roofer would treat swapping a bedded ridge for a dry one the same way. Listing adds a second layer: listed building consent covers works that alter the building's character. A conservation area brings extra attention to whatever can be seen from the road, so keeping the same tile, shade and profile is the careful route.

Who decides if the ridge can change?

In Taunton and most of Somerset, Somerset Council's planning team does. Inside Exmoor National Park it is Exmoor National Park Authority. A dry ridge that keeps the same tile, colour and profile is far more likely to be accepted than one that changes the look, and a roofer who records the existing ridge in photos before work helps you show that. Those photos also settle any later argument about whether the new ridge looks like the old one. We take them at the survey and pass copies to you.

Our pages on dry ridge in a conservation area and what is dry ridge go further, and the dry ridge and verge page covers the system as a whole.