Metal Roof vs Asphalt Shingles for a Chicago-Suburb Home: An Honest Comparison
Metal roofing gets a lot of enthusiastic marketing and asphalt shingles get treated as the boring default. Neither reputation is quite right for a house in Arlington Heights, Glenview or Highland Park. Here is how the two really compare in our weather, on our housing stock, at real prices.
What we mean by each
Asphalt shingles here means architectural (dimensional) shingles from the major manufacturers, the product on the large majority of homes in Mount Prospect, Palatine, Schaumburg and Arlington Heights. Metal roof means one of two things: standing seam panels, where the fasteners are hidden under raised seams, or exposed-fastener panels, where screws go through the face of the panel. Standing seam is what belongs on a house. Exposed-fastener metal is fine on a barn, a shed or a commercial building where a gasket screw that needs re-tightening in fifteen years is not a problem. When someone quotes you a surprisingly cheap metal roof for a home, it is usually exposed-fastener, and that is a different product than the one in the photos.
Snow and ice: the part that matters most here
Metal sheds snow. That sounds like an advantage until a roof-sized slab lets go over your front door, your gutters or your neighbor's car. Every standing seam roof we install in the northwest suburbs gets snow guards over entries, walkways and anywhere the roof drains toward something you care about, and that is a cost and a design detail many quotes leave out. Metal also does not eliminate ice dams; ice dams come from heat leaking into the attic, not from the roof surface. A metal roof over a poorly insulated attic in Glenview will still build ice at the eaves, and ice sliding on metal can tear off gutters. Asphalt shingles hold snow in place, which keeps the load on the roof structure but avoids the avalanche. In both cases the real fix for ice dams is attic insulation, air sealing and ventilation, which we cover in our attic ventilation and insulation pages.
Hail and wind
Hail is a regular event in Lake County and the northwest suburbs. Asphalt shingles bruise and lose granules in a hard hailstorm, and a bad enough storm means replacement, which is why Class 4 impact-rated shingles are worth asking about. Metal panels do not lose granules or crack, but they dent, and a dented standing seam roof is usually a cosmetic problem rather than a leak. Some insurers now write cosmetic damage exclusions on metal roofs, which means a hail-dented metal roof might not be covered for replacement while a hail-damaged shingle roof would be. Ask your carrier before you choose, not after. For wind, a properly installed standing seam roof is very hard to lift, and a properly installed architectural shingle roof with the right nailing pattern and starter course also performs well in the storms we get. The failures we see in both cases are installation failures, not material failures.
Noise, heat and the myths
The noise complaint about metal comes from barns and pole buildings where the panel is the ceiling. On a house with a solid deck, underlayment and an insulated attic, rain on a standing seam roof is not meaningfully louder than rain on shingles. The heat argument runs the other way: a light-colored metal roof reflects more summer sun than a dark shingle, which helps a little on cooling, but the attic insulation does most of that work in either case. The lightning myth (metal attracts lightning) is not true; metal does not attract lightning, and if it were struck, it is a non-combustible surface. None of these should decide the question.
Lifespan and maintenance
This is where metal earns its price. A standing seam roof properly installed will outlast an asphalt roof by a wide margin; it is reasonable to think of it as the last roof many owners will buy, while an architectural shingle roof in our climate is realistically a twenty-to-thirty-year roof depending on ventilation, exposure and product. But metal is not maintenance-free. Sealants at penetrations and pipe boots age and need renewal, snow guards need checking, and any exposed-fastener metal needs its screws attended to. Asphalt shingle roofs need less thought until the last third of their life, when granule loss, curling and flashing failures start. Either way, an annual look from the ground and a professional inspection every few years catches the small problems while they are $300 to $10,000 repairs rather than replacements.
Fit with the house and the neighborhood
Metal looks right on some houses and wrong on others. Farmhouse, modern, contemporary, Prairie-influenced homes, and additions or porch roofs on many styles all carry standing seam well. A brick Georgian in Arlington Heights or a Tudor in Winnetka usually does not, and on the North Shore the neighbors and sometimes an architectural review board will have opinions. Some HOA communities in Schaumburg and Palatine restrict metal outright or limit colors and profiles. Check the covenants before you fall in love with a sample. We also install a lot of hybrid roofs: standing seam over a low-slope porch, bay or addition where shingles are a poor fit, and architectural shingles on the main roof. That is often the best answer on a traditional house.
Resale
A metal roof adds resale value in the sense that a buyer will not be pricing in a roof replacement, and a small number of buyers actively want one. It does not add value equal to its cost premium in our market; a buyer in Mount Prospect is not paying a large premium over the comparable house with a five-year-old shingle roof. A new architectural shingle roof is what most buyers here expect and it clears inspection cleanly. If you plan to sell within a few years, shingles are usually the financially sensible choice; if you plan to stay, metal starts to make sense.
What each costs
A residential architectural shingle replacement in the northwest suburbs and North Shore generally lands between $15,000 and $40,000, with larger or more complex homes running $40,000 to $70,000. Standing seam metal on the same house costs considerably more than shingles, and most metal projects we price fall into that larger and complex band, $40,000 to $70,000, with the biggest drivers being the panel gauge and finish, the number of hips, valleys and penetrations, snow guards, and the trim and flashing work at chimneys and walls. We do not publish per-square-foot numbers because they hide exactly those drivers. Repairs on either roof type typically run $300 to $10,000.
Commercial buildings
The same comparison shows up on commercial and institutional work: churches, schools, clubhouses, retail buildings and office buildings with pitched roofs in Palatine, Libertyville, Lake Forest and Mount Prospect. Standing seam is common on new commercial construction because of its lifespan and low maintenance; architectural shingles remain the practical choice on multifamily buildings, townhome HOAs and many churches where the roof is large and the budget has to cover a lot of area. On low-slope commercial roofs the comparison does not apply at all, and a flat membrane system is the right product. We install shingles and standing seam on both residential and commercial buildings and will tell you which one fits the building rather than which one has the higher ticket.
Our honest recommendation
For most homes in our area, a quality architectural shingle roof, installed with proper ventilation and ice-and-water protection at the eaves, is the right answer: it looks correct on the house, it performs in our weather, and it costs a fraction of metal. Metal is the right answer when the owner is staying for the long term, the house style carries it, snow shedding can be managed, and the budget accommodates it. And if your current roof has ten good years left, we will tell you that and suggest a repair instead of either one.
Talk to us
Leaders Roofing installs architectural shingles and standing seam metal on homes and commercial buildings across Cook and Lake Counties, and has since 1996. Call (708) 847-5418 or request a free estimate and we will look at your roof, your attic and your house style before we recommend anything.