Metal vs. Asphalt Shingles: Which Is Better for St. Louis Homes?

The short answer

For most homes in St. Charles and St. Louis County, a quality architectural asphalt shingle is the right call. Metal is the right call for a smaller set of homes — long-term ownership, a roof profile that suits it, and an owner who wants to buy a roof once and stop thinking about it.

Anyone who tells you one is simply better than the other is selling the one they'd rather install.

What each one actually costs you

Asphalt is the volume product for a reason. It's the lowest cost per square, every crew in the region knows how to install it, and materials are available same-week when a storm rolls through. An architectural shingle system from IKO or CertainTeed carries a manufacturer warranty measured in decades, and a well-installed one will outlast most people's plans for the house.

Standing-seam metal costs substantially more up front — the panels, the fabrication, the trim details, and the labor all run higher. What you're buying is time. A properly installed metal roof can realistically outlive two asphalt roofs.

The question isn't which is cheaper. It's how long you're staying. Run it that way and the answer usually gets obvious fast.

Missouri weather is the real deciding factor

We sit in a part of the country that gets genuine hail, real straight-line wind, and a freeze-thaw cycle that works on everything all winter. That combination punishes a cheap roof faster than sun alone ever would.

Hail: this is where the conversation gets interesting, and where a lot of contractors oversimplify. Metal very rarely leaks after a hailstorm. It also dents. Whether a dented-but-watertight roof is a covered claim depends entirely on whether your policy has a cosmetic damage exclusion — and many Missouri policies added one in the last several years. A Class 4 impact-rated asphalt shingle takes hail well and doesn't dent, which sidesteps the argument entirely.

Wind: both perform well when installed correctly. Both fail when they aren't. Wind failures on asphalt are almost always a nailing pattern problem, not a product problem — nails too high, too few, or overdriven. This is the single most common thing we find when we tear off a roof that failed early.

Freeze-thaw: ice damming at the eaves is a ventilation and insulation problem, not a roofing material problem. Neither product fixes a poorly ventilated attic. If your last roof had ice problems, a new roof alone will not solve them.

What about resale?

A new roof of either type helps a sale. Metal does not typically return its premium at closing in this market — buyers here are not shopping for metal roofs the way they might in parts of the mountain west or the coastal south. If the roof is going on partly as a selling feature, asphalt is the more rational spend.

When we tell people not to go metal

We've talked people out of metal roofs. Usually for one of these reasons:

• They're planning to sell inside five to seven years.
• The roof has a lot of complexity — many valleys, dormers, and penetrations. Metal's cost climbs sharply with complexity, and every penetration is a detail that has to be right.
• Their homeowners association or subdivision covenants restrict it, which happens more often than people expect in newer St. Charles County subdivisions.
• The actual problem is ventilation, and a new roof of any kind was going to disappoint them.

What we'd tell you at your kitchen table

We install both. We have no reason to push you toward either one. What we'll do is get on the roof, look at the deck condition, check what the attic ventilation is actually doing, ask how long you plan to be in the house, and then tell you which one we'd put on our own home in your situation.

If the honest answer is "your roof has six good years left and you should wait," that's what you'll hear. We'd rather have the job in six years than sell you something today you didn't need.