The short answer
Yes, old roof tiles can often be reused, but only the sound ones, and rarely all of them. Clay plain tiles and good natural slates are the best candidates, because they outlive the felt and battens below them. Concrete tiles can go back on too, though their surface wears with age. Every tile is checked for cracks, delamination and frost damage as it comes off, and the losses are made up with matching tiles. Reuse saves on material but adds labour, so it is a choice about the look and age of the roof, not always about price.
Which tiles are worth keeping
Clay plain tiles are the strongest case for reuse. A hand-made or old machine-made clay tile has a colour and texture that new tiles struggle to match, and on a house in a conservation area, keeping the weathered face is often the whole point. Natural slate is similar: the slate itself may be sound after a long life, and it is usually the fixings that fail. A slate hung on iron nails will slip long before the stone gives up, so those can be stripped, sorted and nailed again with fresh copper or stainless fixings.
Concrete interlocking tiles are different. They were made to a price and to a pattern, and the colour sits in a thin surface layer that fades and roughens with the years. They can be reused, and plenty of roofs on 1960s and 1970s estates around Basingstoke are re-covered that way, but the surface is often porous by then and holds moss. Reusing them keeps the look of the street, nothing more. If the roof is at the end of its life because the tiles themselves are tired, putting them back is a false economy.
What goes wrong on the strip
Tiles are checked tile by tile on the way off. Some break simply in being lifted, particularly old nibs that have rusted into the batten or tiles bedded in mortar at the verge. Others turn out to have been cracked for years under moss. The worst problem is frost damage: a tile that has soaked up water and then frozen can have its face flake away in layers. That layer-by-layer failure is called delamination, and a tile in that state will not last another winter.
Allow for some loss. A fair rule is that the tiles from the shaded, north-facing slope are in a worse state than those from the sunny side, because they stay damp for longer. The count of sound tiles is a matter of what comes off the roof, so it cannot be known exactly until the strip is under way. That is why a quote for reuse should state how the shortfall will be made up and at what cost per tile.
How a reuse job is run
The tiles are lifted slope by slope, stacked on the scaffold or the ground and sorted into sound, doubtful and rejected. Sound ones are cleaned of old mortar and moss. Rejects go to the skip. New battens, which are the timber laths the tiles hang from, and new underlay are fitted before any tile goes back, because reusing tiles does not mean reusing a membrane that has perished. Our page on whether a new roof needs new battens explains why we nearly always replace them, and the page on what stripping a roof involves covers the sequence in more detail.
Once the tiles are laid again, the sound originals go on the visible front slope and the mismatched or newer replacements go on the back or an unseen slope, so the roof reads as a single colour from the street. Ridge and hip tiles are usually fixed afresh with mechanical fixings rather than only mortar, in line with BS 5534:2014.
Reuse or new: what decides it
Three things settle it. The first is the age and condition of the tiles themselves, as above. The second is whether the house is listed or in a conservation area, where matching the existing tiles can matter to the council. If you are unsure, check with your council's conservation officer before you order anything. The third is cost. Reused tiles save on the material bill, but they cost more in labour to sort and clean, and any shortfall has to be bought. On a roof where half the tiles are rejected, the saving disappears.
There is also a weight question. If you swap a lightweight covering for a heavier one and the weight rises by 15% or more, building control approval is needed and the roof structure may need strengthening. Reusing your own tiles avoids that issue, which is one more reason it suits an older roof. Our page on heavier roof coverings and structural checks covers it.
How we approach it
We look at the tiles during the free survey, lift a few from different slopes and photograph the undersides, so you can see their condition on your own roof. If most of them are sound, we say so and quote for reuse with a stated price for any tiles we have to replace. If they are tired, we say that too, and price new tiles beside it so you can compare. The price is fixed and written down, and our workmanship is guaranteed for ten years, again in writing. The full job sits under our roof replacement service.
Every roof is different. A free survey with photos settles it for yours.
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