Wood Shake Roof: Is It Still a Good Choice?

A wood shake roof is still one of the best looking roofs money can buy, and that is genuinely not in dispute. What has changed is everything around it. This guide covers what cedar shake actually costs installed, why roughly 60 percent of national insurers now decline or restrict wood roofs, what fire ratings really mean when a carrier asks for Class A, which failure mode actually ends these roofs, and the three situations where wood shake is still the right answer.

Here is the part almost nobody tells you before you spend $19,000 on cedar: the material is not what decides this. Your insurance carrier is.

The question the internet keeps answering is the wrong one

Search this topic and you will get the same list nine times over. Beautiful. Natural insulation. Expensive. Flammable. High maintenance. All true, all useless, because none of it tells you whether you can actually own the thing. A wood shake roof can be a perfectly sound, well built, correctly installed roof and still be a serious financial problem, for a reason that has nothing to do with the wood.

Where this actually goes wrong

The pattern plays out the same way over and over. A homeowner falls in love with cedar, gets quotes, picks a contractor, signs, and the roof goes on. Then the renewal notice arrives. The carrier is non-renewing, or the new premium is 30 to 50 percent higher, or the policy now excludes wind and hail damage to the roof itself. That is a bad surprise on a $19,000 purchase, and it is entirely avoidable with one phone call made in the right order.

What a Wood Shake Roof Actually Costs Installed

Cedar shake runs $5.50 to $13.50 per square foot installed, a range Fixr and This Old House cost research land on independently. On a 2,000 square foot roof that is roughly $11,000 to $27,000, with an average near $19,000. A 1,500 square foot roof averages about $14,250, and a 3,000 square foot roof averages about $28,500. For scale, basic asphalt starts around $4.25 per square foot, so you are paying somewhere between a modest premium and triple the price depending on what you specify.

Grade moves the price more than most homeowners realize

Cedar is graded, and the grades are not close to each other in quality. Number 1 grade is clear heartwood, 100 percent edge grain, no defects. Number 2 allows limited sapwood, flat grain, and knots above the clear portion. Number 3 allows unlimited sapwood and flat grain. This Old House puts straight grain material at 30 to 50 percent more than lower grade stock, and common grade at about 30 percent less. Length matters too: 24 inch “Royal” shakes run $5.50 to $8.50 per square foot in material where 16 inch runs $3.50 to $5.50.

Why two cedar quotes can be $8,000 apart

Now you know why. A bid using Number 3 flat grain shakes and a bid using Number 1 edge grain heartwood are quoting two different roofs with the same name. Neither contractor is lying to you. If your roof cost by material comparison is going to mean anything, every cedar bid has to name the grade, the length, and the mill. Get that in writing or you are comparing nothing at all.

The maintenance number that changes the whole calculation

This is where cedar quietly gets expensive. Plan on inspections one to two times per year at $100 to $400 each, deep cleaning every five to seven years at $250 to $600, and preservative treatment every few years at $500 to $1,500. This Old House ran the lifetime arithmetic and put wood roofing at roughly $730 per year of use against $220 for asphalt. That is the honest comparison, and it is more than three times the annual cost. Run your own numbers through our roofing cost calculator before you decide.

The Insurance Question That Decides This Before You Pick a Grade

This is the section the rest of the internet leaves out, and it is the one that should drive your decision. Wood roofs have become an underwriting problem, and the shift has been fast enough that plenty of contractors selling cedar have not fully caught up to it.

What carriers are actually doing

Per EDCO industry reporting, roughly 60 percent of national insurers now refuse to cover homes with wood roofs outright or attach limitations severe enough to make the policy close to useless. This is not confined to wildfire country either. California, Colorado, and a good part of the Midwest have all seen carriers tighten requirements or non-renew cedar and redwood shake homes. Minnesota roofers now advertise specifically to homeowners whose policies were dropped over a cedar roof, which tells you how routine it has become.

The three ways this shows up on your policy

It is rarely a flat no. More often it is one of three quieter outcomes. The premium comes in 30 to 50 percent above what a comparable home with a different roof pays. Or the roof deductible gets raised specifically. Or, most damaging of all, the policy stays in place but excludes wind and hail damage to the roof, which means you are insured for everything except the thing most likely to happen to a roof. Read the declarations page, not the quote summary.

Make the call before you sign, not after

The fix costs nothing and takes fifteen minutes. Call your carrier, tell them exactly what you are considering, and ask three questions: will you continue to write this policy with a wood shake roof, what does the premium become, and are there any roof specific exclusions or deductible changes. Then ask for the answer in writing. If your current carrier says no, ask what roof they would say yes to before you assume you need to shop the whole market.

Fire Ratings: Why “Fire-Treated” Is Not What Your Insurer Is Asking For

Homeowners hear “pressure treated for fire” and assume the fire conversation is over. It is not, and the gap between what treated cedar delivers and what a carrier or a building department requires is where people get caught.

Untreated cedar is not rated at all

Start here, because it surprises people. According to Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety guidance, untreated shakes and shingles are unrated – they do not merely score poorly, they fail to meet the requirements for even Class C, the lowest of the three fire classes. If nobody has said the word “treated” to you, assume you are looking at unrated wood.

Class A is an assembly, not a shake

Here is the distinction that matters most. The Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau is explicit that a Class A wood roof is achieved through a component system, meaning a Class B treated shake combined with specific underlying materials that lift the whole assembly to Class A. No wood shake earns Class A on its own. So when an insurer or a code official asks for Class A and your contractor answers “these are fire treated,” those are two different statements. Ask which components make up the rated assembly and get the manufacturer’s system detail.

The blue label trap

This one catches even careful buyers. Cedar uses two separate labeling systems and they use the same colors to mean opposite things. In the Certigrade quality system, blue label is Number 1, the premium grade. In the Certi-Guard fire retardant system, red label is Class B and blue label is Class C, the lower fire rating. A homeowner who has learned to “ask for the blue label” can be handed exactly what they asked for and end up with the weaker fire class. The bureau itself cautions that asking for “number one blue label” is not specific enough. Say the grade and the fire class separately, out loud, and put both on the contract.

Some places will not allow it regardless

Updated Wildland-Urban Interface codes effectively prohibit wood shake in high severity fire zones even when it is treated. If you are near a mapped WUI area, settle that permitting question before you spend time choosing grades. Pressure impregnated treatment is rated by the bureau as permanent and is tested against simulated decades of weathering, but a coating sprayed onto an existing roof afterward is a different product and does not carry that label or that rating.

What Actually Ends a Wood Shake Roof (It Is Not Hail)

Cedar has a reputation as hail bait. It is worth being careful here, because the loudest sources on that point sell steel and composite roofing, and the independent testing data tells a more complicated story.

The hail reputation versus the testing data

You will see the claim that wood roofs carry substantially higher hail damage rates, and it is published largely by manufacturers of the alternatives. Set against that, IBHS and RICOWI guidance notes that cedar products carrying a Class 3 or Class 4 impact designation are available, Class 4 being the highest rating there is, and that tested cedar has withstood two inch steel balls dropped from twenty feet. It also observes that cedar can rebound from minor hail impacts, leaving virtually no evidence once the roof weathers normally. Cedar has real vulnerabilities. Hail is not the headline one.

Fasteners are the actual failure mode

The same guidance is blunt about what does go wrong: fastener pull-through and dislodged fasteners, failures that most often trace back to poor quality or incorrect fasteners. And when fastener failure becomes widespread, the recommendation is generally a full tear-off and replacement, not a repair. That is a five figure difference driven by a hardware choice. The wind numbers make the same point from the other direction – CSSB member products have tested at 173 mph for shingles and 245 mph for shakes, with the highest ratings achieved specifically when ring-shank nails were used. Put ring-shank fasteners in the contract by name.

Moisture and ventilation set the real lifespan

The advertised 30 to 50 year lifespan is a dry climate number. Fixr puts cedar at up to 50 years in proper conditions but 20 to 30 years in wet and humid climates, which is close to a halving. Cedar holds moisture, moss and mildew hold more of it, and trapped moisture rots wood from underneath. Overhanging branches and clogged gutters accelerate all of it, and high pressure washing by inexperienced hands causes significant damage of its own. If you live somewhere genuinely damp and shaded, budget the shorter number and mean it.

The lifespan assumes maintenance most owners never do

Every long lifespan figure quoted for cedar assumes the full maintenance program actually happens: inspections once or twice a year, deep cleaning every five to seven years, treatment every few years, individual shakes swapped as they fail. Skip it and you are not getting a 40 year roof that ages gracefully. You are getting a 20 year roof and an early conversation about roof replacement cost.

When Wood Shake Still Makes Sense, and What to Do When It Does Not

None of this makes cedar a bad roof. It makes it a specific roof, correct for a narrower set of situations than it used to be. Here is how that shakes out honestly.

Three situations where cedar is still the right call

Wood shake still wins when you are in a dry climate with good sun exposure, where the 40 to 50 year figure is realistic rather than aspirational. It wins when a historic district or an HOA requires it, in which case the decision is made for you and your job is to buy Number 1 grade and correct fasteners. And it wins when the appearance genuinely matters more to you than the money, you have confirmed coverage in writing, and you will actually do the maintenance. That is a real buyer, and cedar is the right answer for them.

What to buy instead when the insurance answer is no

If your carrier will not write the policy, the practical path is a Class A rated product that reads as cedar from the street. Synthetic and composite shake profiles typically carry Class A fire ratings and Class 4 impact ratings, and carriers generally write standard policies on them without argument. Metal roofing in a shake profile is another route to the same place. Plain asphalt shingles remain the cheapest way to a Class A roof if the look is negotiable.

Do not let anyone shingle over your existing shakes

If a contractor offers to lay asphalt straight over your old cedar, decline. Shake roofs are frequently built on spaced sheathing rather than solid decking, which cannot properly support or hold fasteners for shingles. The layover traps heat and cuts ventilation, which shortens the life of the new asphalt. And it can void the shingle warranty and complicate an insurance claim later. Tear off, deck properly, then roof.

Making the quotes genuinely comparable

Whatever you land on, hold every bid to the same spec sheet: grade and length, treatment and its fire class, the components making up a Class A assembly if one is required, fastener type, whether decking is being replaced, tear-off included or not, and the maintenance schedule the warranty depends on. Compare wood shake roofing against the alternatives on that basis, and get at least three quotes so you can see which line items actually differ.

Frequently Asked Questions About Wood Shake Roofs

How long does a wood shake roof last?

A properly maintained cedar shake roof lasts about 30 to 50 years, with 40 to 50 realistic in dry, sunny climates. Fixr puts the figure at 20 to 30 years in wet and humid conditions. The published lifespan assumes annual inspections, deep cleaning every five to seven years, and periodic preservative treatment. Without that program, expect the low end.

Will homeowners insurance cover a wood shake roof?

Often not, or not on normal terms. EDCO industry reporting puts roughly 60 percent of national insurers as declining wood roofs or restricting coverage heavily. Carriers that do write the policy frequently quote 30 to 50 percent above comparable homes, raise the roof deductible, or exclude wind and hail damage to the roof. Confirm your coverage in writing before you sign anything.

How much does a wood shake roof cost?

Cedar shake runs $5.50 to $13.50 per square foot installed per Fixr and This Old House cost data. That is roughly $11,000 to $27,000 on a 2,000 square foot roof, averaging near $19,000. Grade drives much of the spread, with straight grain material running 30 to 50 percent above lower grades. Add tear-off at $1 to $5 per square foot.

Can you put asphalt shingles over a wood shake roof?

It is possible and it is a bad idea. Shake roofs often sit on spaced sheathing that cannot properly hold shingle fasteners or carry the load. The layover reduces ventilation and traps heat, which shortens asphalt life. It can also void the shingle warranty and create problems with an insurance claim. Tear off the shakes and install proper decking first.

Are wood shake roofs a fire hazard?

Untreated cedar is unrated, meaning it does not meet even Class C per IBHS guidance. Pressure impregnated products earn Class B or Class C, and a Class A wood roof is only achieved as a full assembly combining a Class B shake with specific underlying components. Updated Wildland-Urban Interface codes effectively prohibit wood shake in high severity fire zones even when treated.

What is the difference between wood shakes and wood shingles?

Shakes are split from the log, leaving a thick, textured, irregular face with strong shadow lines. Shingles are sawn on both sides, producing a thinner and more uniform look. Shakes cost more and read as more rustic. Both are commonly western red cedar, and both are graded on heartwood content, edge grain, and permitted defects.

Is a wood shake roof worth the money?

It is worth it for a specific buyer: dry climate, coverage confirmed in writing, appearance genuinely valued over cost, and a real willingness to maintain it. This Old House puts wood roofing at about $730 per year of use against $220 for asphalt. If any of those four conditions is missing, a Class A synthetic shake usually delivers the look with far less friction.