An asphalt shingle is a type of wall or roof shingle that uses asphalt for waterproofing. It is one of the most widely used roofing covers in North America because it has a relatively inexpensive up-front cost and is fairly simple to install.

A beehive house is a building made from a circle of stones topped with a domed roof. The name comes from the similarity in shape to a straw beehive.

A birch-bark roof is a roof construction traditional in Finland for farmhouses and farm buildings built from logs. The birch-bark roof was the prevailing roof type in rural Finland up until the 1860s, when it was replaced by the use of other materials such as metal sheeting and later roofing felt. The tradition of birch-bark roofs has been revived in recent years as a craft in connection with the restoration of old farm buildings that have been converted into open-air museums. The main reason for using birch bark was that when added in several layers, it acts as an efficient water- and damp-proof course. The birch trees would normally be de-barked, using a knife, during the summer.

Bituminous waterproofing systems are designed to protect residential and commercial buildings. Bitumen is a mixed substance made up of organic liquids that are highly sticky, viscous, and waterproof. These systems are sometimes used to construct roofs, in the form of roofing felt or roll roofing products.
A board roof or boarded roof is a roofing method of using boards as the weather barrier on a roof. Board roofs can be applied in several ways, the basic types have the boards installed vertically and installed horizontally. Double board roofs were sometimes used on railroad cars.
A clochán, or beehive hut, is a dry-stone hut with a corbelled roof, commonly associated with the south-western Irish seaboard. The precise construction date of most of these structures is unknown with the buildings belonging to a long-established Celtic tradition, though there is at present no direct evidence to date the surviving examples before c.AD 700". Some associated with religious sites may be pre-Romanesque, he considers most fully intact structures to date after the 12th century or later. It is where monks lived.

Collyweston stone slate is a traditional roofing material found in central England.

Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement that hardens (cures) over time. In the past, lime based cement binders, such as lime putty, were often used but sometimes with other hydraulic cements, such as a calcium aluminate cement or with Portland cement to form Portland cement concrete. Many other non-cementitious types of concrete exist with other methods of binding aggregate together, including asphalt concrete with a bitumen binder, which is frequently used for road surfaces, and polymer concretes that use polymers as a binder.

There are four main techniques used today in the UK and mainland Europe for copper cladding a building:seamed-cladding : max 600mm by 4000mm 'seam centres'. shingle-cladding : max 600mm by 4000mm 'seam centres'. slot-in panels : max 350mm wide for 1.0mm, by nominal 4 m length. cassettes : largest-format cladding elements, more subframing is needed: can be 900mm x nominal 4000mm length.

Copper has earned a respected place in the related fields of architecture, building construction, and interior design. From cathedrals to castles and from homes to offices, copper is used for a variety of architectural elements, including roofs, flashings, gutters, downspouts, domes, spires, vaults, wall cladding, and building expansion joints.

Corrugated galvanised iron, or steel colloquially corrugated iron, wriggly tin, pailing, corrugated sheet metal and occasionally abbreviated CGI) is a building material composed of sheets of hot-dip galvanised mild steel, cold-rolled to produce a linear corrugated pattern in them. Although it is still popularly called "iron" in the UK, the material used is actually steel, and only the surviving vintage sheets may actually be made up of 100% iron. The corrugations increase the bending strength of the sheet in the direction perpendicular to the corrugations, but not parallel to them, because the steel must be stretched to bend perpendicular to the corrugations. Normally each sheet is manufactured longer in its strong direction.

A double tee or double-T beam is a load-bearing structure that resembles two T-beams connected to each other side by side. The strong bond of the flange and the two webs creates a structure that is capable of withstanding high loads while having a long span. The typical sizes of double tees are up to 15 feet (4.6 m) for flange width, up to 5 feet (1.5 m) for web depth, and up to 80 feet (24 m) or more for span length. Double tees are pre-manufactured from prestressed concrete which allows construction time to be shortened.

EPDM rubber is a type of synthetic rubber that is used in many applications.

Fibre cement is a composite building and construction material, used mainly in roofing and facade products because of its strength and durability. One common use is in fiber cement siding on buildings.

A green roof or living roof is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproofing membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage and irrigation systems. Container gardens on roofs, where plants are maintained in pots, are not generally considered to be true green roofs, although this is debated. Rooftop ponds are another form of green roofs which are used to treat greywater. Vegetation, soil, drainage layer, roof barrier and irrigation system constitute green roof.

A grouted roof is a form of slate roof. It has developed as a form of vernacular architecture associated with the West coast of the British Isles.

The imbrex and tegula were overlapping roof tiles used in ancient Greek and Roman architecture as a waterproof and durable roof covering. They were made predominantly of fired clay, but also sometimes of marble, bronze or gilt. In Rome, they replaced wooden shingles, and were used on almost every type of structure, from humble outbuildings to grand temples and public facilities.

Mangalore tiles are a type of tile native to the city of Mangalore, India. Typically considered to be a part of Spanish and Italian architectural styles, the tiles were first introduced to India in 1860 by a German missionary. Since that time, the industry has flourished in India with these red tiles, prepared from hard laterite clay, in great demand throughout the country. They are exported to Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and the Far East and even as far as East Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Australia. These were the only tiles recommended for government buildings in India under the British Raj.

Monk and Nun is a style of roof similar to imbrex and tegula, but instead of using a flat tile (tegula) and an arched tile (imbrex), two arched imbrex tiles are used.

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is a synthetic fluoropolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that has numerous applications. The commonly known brand name of PTFE-based formulas is Teflon by Chemours, a spin-off from DuPont, which originally discovered the compound in 1938.

A roof seamer is a portable roll forming machine that is used to install mechanically seamed structural standing seam metal roof panels, as part of an overall metal construction building envelope system. The machine is small and portable to be handled by an operator on top of a roof. The machine is applied to the overlapping area when two parallel roof panels meet. The action of the machine bends the two panels together to form a joint that has weather-tight qualities superior to other types of roof systems and cladding.

Roof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat, rectangular shapes laid in courses from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive course overlapping the joints below. Shingles are held by the roof rafters and are made of various materials such as wood, slate, flagstone, metal, plastic, and composite materials such as fibre cement and asphalt shingles. Ceramic roof tiles, which still dominate in Europe and some parts of Asia, are still usually called tiles. Roof shingles may deteriorate faster and need to repel more water than wall shingles. They are a very common roofing material in the United States.
Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four families, all in the order Alismatales. Seagrasses evolved from terrestrial plants which recolonised the ocean 70 to 100 million years ago.

Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. Foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering, but instead is in planes perpendicular to the direction of metamorphic compression.

A sod roof, or turf roof, is a traditional Scandinavian type of green roof covered with sod on top of several layers of birch bark on gently sloping wooden roof boards. Until the late 19th century, it was the most common roof on rural log houses in Norway and large parts of the rest of Scandinavia. Its distribution roughly corresponds to the distribution of the log building technique in the vernacular architecture of Finland and the Scandinavian peninsula. The load of approximately 250 kg per m2 of a sod roof is an advantage because it helps to compress the logs and make the walls more draught-proof. In winter the total load may well increase to 400 or 500 kg per m2 because of snow. Sod is also a reasonably efficient insulator in a cold climate. The birch bark underneath ensures that the roof will be waterproof.

Solar shingles, also called photovoltaic shingles, are solar panels designed to look like and function as conventional roofing materials, such as asphalt shingle or slate, while also producing electricity. Solar shingles are a type of solar energy solution known as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).

Stainless steel is a group of iron-based alloys that contain a minimum of approximately 11% chromium, a composition that prevents the iron from rusting and also provides heat-resistant properties. Different types of stainless steel include the elements carbon, nitrogen, aluminium, silicon, sulfur, titanium, nickel, copper, selenium, niobium, and molybdenum. Specific types of stainless steel are often designated by a three-digit number, e.g., 304 stainless.

Steel is an alloy of iron with typically a few tenths of a percent of carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistant need typically an additional 11% chromium. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, steel is used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, trains, cars, machines, electrical appliances, and weapons. Iron is the base metal of steel. Depending on the temperature, it can take two crystalline forms : body-centred cubic and face-centred cubic. The interaction of the allotropes of iron with the alloying elements, primarily carbon, gives steel and cast iron their range of unique properties.

A T-beam, used in construction, is a load-bearing structure of reinforced concrete, wood or metal, with a T-shaped cross section. The top of the T-shaped cross section serves as a flange or compression member in resisting compressive stresses. The web of the beam below the compression flange serves to resist shear stress and to provide greater separation for the coupled forces of bending.
Tar paper is a heavy-duty paper used in construction. Tar paper is made by impregnating paper or fiberglass mat with tar, producing a waterproof material useful for roof construction. Tar paper is distinguished from roofing felt which is impregnated with asphalt instead of tar; but these two products are used the same way, and their names sometimes are used informally as synonyms.

Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge, rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of the vegetation stays dry and is densely packed—trapping air—thatching also functions as insulation. It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates. Thatch is still employed by builders in developing countries, usually with low-cost local vegetation. By contrast, in some developed countries it is the choice of some affluent people who desire a rustic look for their home, would like a more ecologically friendly roof, or who have purchased an originally thatched abode.

A thermoplastic, or thermosoftening plastic, is a plastic polymer material that becomes pliable or moldable at a certain elevated temperature and solidifies upon cooling.

A trullo is a traditional Apulian dry stone hut with a conical roof. Their style of construction is specific to the Itria Valley, in the Murge area of the Italian region of Apulia. Trulli were generally constructed as temporary field shelters and storehouses or as permanent dwellings by small proprietors or agricultural labourers. In the town of Alberobello, in the province of Bari, whole districts contain dense concentrations of trulli. The golden age of trulli was the nineteenth century, especially its final decades, which were marked by the development of wine growing.