Every few weeks we get a call from a homeowner in Queen Anne or Mercer Island who just got a pitch from a metal roofing salesman and wants to know if it's worth it. The honest answer? For most single-family homes in Seattle, architectural asphalt shingles are still the right call. Metal has its place, and we install both, but the math only pencils out in specific situations. Here's how we actually think about it on the houses we walk every week.
## The quick verdict
If you're planning to live in your home for another 20 years and the current roof is asphalt, put asphalt back on. You'll spend roughly half as much and the roof will likely outlive your plans for the house. If you're building a custom home in North Bend, replacing a cedar shake that's decades old, or re-roofing a modern craftsman where the look is part of the design, metal gets interesting. Beyond that, the premium is tough to justify for an average Seattle ranch.
## Cost (real Puget Sound numbers)
These are ballparks from what we're seeing on actual quotes in 2026, not marketing estimates.
Architectural asphalt shingles, installed: roughly $7 to $9 per square foot for a standard tear-off and replacement. A typical 2,000 square foot roof lands somewhere in the $14,000 to $22,000 range. You can read our full breakdown in the 2026 Seattle roof replacement cost guide if you want to see what drives the spread.
Standing seam metal, installed: $12 to $18 per square foot, sometimes more on complex rooflines. That same 2,000 square foot roof now runs $24,000 to $36,000. Exposed fastener metal (screwed-down panels) is cheaper, closer to $9 to $12, but we don't recommend it for residential. The fasteners back out over time and become a maintenance issue.
So you're paying a premium of roughly $10,000 to $15,000 for metal on a standard Seattle home. That's the number to keep in your head for the rest of this post.
## Lifespan
A quality architectural shingle, properly installed and kept moss-free, will give you 25 to 30 years in the PNW. We've pulled roofs off Ballard homes that were pushing 28 and still watertight because the owner kept them clean.
Standing seam metal, realistically, goes 40 to 50 years or more. The paint finish is usually the first thing to fade. The panels themselves last much longer than the coating. On a house you plan to own for life, that longer lifespan genuinely matters. On a house you're planning to sell in ten years, it's wasted money.
## Moss (the big PNW consideration)
Here's where Seattle differs from almost every other market. Moss is the single biggest roof killer here, and it affects both materials, but not equally.
Asphalt shingles are textured, so moss filaments grab the granules and work their way between courses. Standing seam metal is slicker, which means moss has a harder time anchoring. It still grows on shaded north slopes (we've scraped it off plenty of metal roofs in Issaquah), but it sheds easier and doesn't dig in the same way. A regular soft wash and good maintenance keeps both materials alive longer, but metal gives you a slight edge on the mossy slopes.
## The noise myth
Every homeowner asks about this, so let's kill it. A properly installed standing seam metal roof over solid decking with synthetic underlayment is not loud. The noise complaint comes from old barn-style metal roofs installed over open purlins. With plywood sheathing, ice and water shield, and underlayment beneath it, you will not hear rain hitting the roof from inside your living room. We've stood inside enough finished metal homes during PNW downpours to vouch for this.
## Weight and going over existing roofs
Metal is significantly lighter than asphalt, which occasionally matters. If you've got an old cedar shake that's on the edge of its load rating, or a 1920s craftsman with questionable rafters, metal takes less strain off the structure. It's not a huge deal on modern framing, but we've used it as a deciding factor on a few older homes where the engineer flagged weight.
## Aesthetics and HOAs
Metal looks great on modern and contemporary homes. It looks odd on a traditional Colonial. Standing seam is gaining acceptance in Seattle neighborhoods but still catches HOA resistance in some of the older planned communities around Sammamish and Redmond. Check your covenants before you fall in love with a dark bronze panel sample. Shingles go on anything and nobody ever objects.
## Installation complexity
Here's the part a lot of homeowners don't hear. Standing seam metal is a different trade than asphalt. Fewer Seattle crews do it well. The panel layout, the hemmed edges, the custom flashings around penetrations, all of it requires training most shingle crews don't have. If you hire the wrong installer, you'll have callbacks on water infiltration at the valleys and sidewalls for years. When we do metal, it's with a crew that's been trained on it specifically. That's part of why we use metal more often on commercial roofing work where the trade base is deeper.
## What we'd put on our own house
Honest answer. For most of our own homes, architectural shingles. The price difference pays for a lot of other things, and a good shingle install with solid shingle installation practice will easily get you to 25 or 30 years. If we were building a custom modern in the mountains, or re-roofing a cabin where we wouldn't be around to deal with moss maintenance, we'd probably spring for standing seam. Context matters.
## When metal actually wins
A few situations where we'd genuinely recommend it: a modern or contemporary home where the look is the point, a home with heavy tree cover where the slicker surface helps with moss, a cabin or second home where you want to set it and forget it, or a house where you're planning to own it forever and want to never re-roof again. Outside of those, standard shingles are the right call. If you want a firm number on your specific home, we'll put together a real roof replacement estimate or you can start with our instant roof quote tool.
