Cedar Shake vs Slate Roofing for a Historic West Chester Home
On the older streets of West Chester, an asphalt roof can look wrong on a house that was built for something better. Here is how cedar shake and slate really compare on a historic Chester County home, from the crew that installs both.
West Chester was incorporated in 1799, and its downtown historic district has been on the National Register since 1985. Walk those blocks and you pass Greek Revival, Victorian, and stone farmhouse homes that were framed and finished long before asphalt shingles existed. The Chester County Courthouse on High Street was designed in the 1840s by Thomas U. Walter, who went on to design the dome of the U.S. Capitol.
Roofs on houses like these were meant to be seen, and when they finally wear out, an asphalt shingle can read as a shortcut. The two materials that fit the era are cedar shake and slate.
We install and repair both, and homeowners here ask us the same question every fall: which one belongs on my house. Here is the honest comparison, without the sales gloss.
If you would rather skip the reading and have someone look at the roof, that work is our specialty roofing service.
Why the roof matters more on an older home
A modern development home is designed around a single roofing product, so almost anything looks fine on it. An older West Chester home's proportions, the pitch of the roof, the depth of the eaves, and the dormers were drawn for a heavier, more textured material, and the wrong roof flattens the whole house.
On homes inside the historic district, the roofing choice can also fall under review, so the material is worth getting right the first time.
The good news is that a house built for slate or cedar was usually framed to carry it. That framing is often still sound a century later, which changes the math on both of these materials in a way most homeowners do not expect.
Slate: the roof that outlives the mortgage
Slate is stone, split into thin tiles, and it lasts longer than any other common roofing material by a wide margin. A slate roof installed and maintained properly is measured in generations, not decades. Southeastern Pennsylvania has real history here: Peach Bottom slate, quarried in the southern part of the state, was judged the finest roofing slate in the world at the London Crystal Palace exhibition in 1850, and it went onto homes and churches across this region for the better part of a century.
Slate is heavy, and it has to be walked and worked by someone who knows how, because a careless boot cracks tiles and a wrong nail sets a leak that will not show up until years later.
Individual broken tiles can be swapped out by a roofer who understands the material, which is how these roofs reach the ages they do. In West Chester's historic district that means a matched replacement piece for each broken slate and new copper or lead at the flashing. The failure point on an old slate roof is almost never the slate. It is the flashing and the fasteners around it, and that is the part a good installer gets right.
Yas and his team did an amazing job with our new roof and explained each step of the way in detail! Highly recommend them! Wonderful communication and kept a neat work site as well.
Cedar shake: warmth, texture, and a living material
Cedar shake is wood, usually western red cedar, split or sawn into thick tapered pieces. Where slate reads formal and hard, cedar reads warm and soft, and it weathers from a fresh amber to a silver gray that suits a farmhouse or a Colonial better than almost anything. Up in Chester Springs and the Uwchland hills, the oldest stone farmhouses and colonials still carry cedar or slate. The shadow lines from a hand-split shake give an old house a depth that flat products cannot.
It needs the roof deck to breathe underneath, because trapped moisture is what rots wood, and it does better in shade-and-sun balance than buried under heavy tree cover that keeps it damp and grows moss. The wooded lots out there are where we see that, with leaves and limbs piling up in the valleys and holding moisture against the roof. A cedar roof does not last as long as slate, and it asks for more attention over its life, but on the right house it is worth it.
The mistake we see is cedar installed like asphalt, nailed tight to a solid deck with no airflow, and done that way it fails early.
Weight, structure, and what your house can carry
Slate is far heavier than asphalt or cedar, and not every roof frame can hold it.
If your home already wears slate or has in the past, the structure very likely carries it, and going back to slate is straightforward. On the 19th-century borough homes we check the layer count too, since two or three layers of asphalt over the original wood decking is common there. If it has only ever had asphalt, a switch to slate may need a structural look before anything else, and sometimes reinforcement.
Cedar sits in the middle, heavier than asphalt but far lighter than slate, so it opens up the historic look on homes that were not framed for stone. Part of what an inspection settles is exactly this: what is under your current roof, what the framing was built to hold, and which materials are actually on the table for your specific house. We would rather tell you that up front than sell you a roof your rafters were never meant to carry.
What actually drives the cost
Both of these are premium roofs, and both cost more than asphalt. The larger part is labor and skill, because slate and cedar are installed by hand by people who have done it before, and that trade is not as common as it used to be. James D. noticed that on the roof we replaced: "There was always management on the site to inform me about the plan and to instruct their team adequately."
Tearing off and disposing of an old slate roof is heavy, slow work on its own. If the deck below has soft spots or the framing needs attention, that adds to the job. "Fast accurate quote," Jim B. wrote about ours. Flashing done right, often in copper on a roof meant to last this long, is another real line in the estimate.
We do not publish a single number for either roof, because an honest figure depends on your roof's size, its pitch, how many valleys and dormers and chimneys it has to be worked around, and what we find once the old material comes off. What we do is come out, measure, look at the structure, and put every line of it on paper so you can see where the money goes before you commit to anything.
Had a great experience with Stephen and his crew. Professional and timely with their work. I was very satisfied with the quality of their work.
So which one belongs on your house
If you want a roof you will genuinely never replace and your home was built to carry it, slate is the answer, and it is hard to argue with a material that lasts a hundred years. If you love the softer, textured look of a Colonial or a farmhouse and want the historic feel without the weight of stone, cedar is the one, as long as it is installed with the airflow the wood depends on. After a roof replacement, Riley M. wrote that "my home has never looked better."
The wrong move is putting either one on without knowing what your structure can hold and what your existing roof is hiding.
Some homeowners here love the look but want the practicality of a modern shingle, and for them a high-end architectural asphalt can echo the depth of shake or slate at a different cost and weight. We are happy to lay all three side by side for your house rather than push you toward the most expensive one.
Start with an honest look at what you have
The right next step on a historic West Chester home is not a quote off a photo. It is a set of trained eyes on your actual roof and, just as important, in your attic, where the framing and the deck tell the real story.
Our inspection is free, we send you the photos whether or not there is work to do, and we tell you plainly which materials your house can carry and which one we would put on it if it were ours. Get that settled first, and the cedar-or-slate decision gets a lot easier.
Ready to put the right roof on your historic home?
Both cedar and slate are our specialty roofing work, and either one starts with a free roof inspection that tells you what your structure can carry. A full re-roof is our roof replacement service. Weighing the premium look against a modern shingle? Metal versus asphalt lays out another path, and if you are stuck between fixing and replacing, read how to weigh repair against replacement in Chester County. See how we work in West Chester, or call (484) 983-3476.
