Roof types: gable, hipped, mansard and säteri roofs

The difference between a säteri roof and a mansard roof is the frieze. Both are broken roofs, where the slope changes pitch on the way up, but the säteri roof (a Swedish manor-house roof) has a low, vertical wall with small windows between the lower and the upper slope. It is a Swedish form from the 17th century. The mansard roof has no frieze; it has a steep lower and a shallow upper slope, often with dormer windows in the steep part. The common roof types also include the gable roof, hipped roof, monopitch roof and flat roof, and together they say a great deal about when and for whom a house was built.

Facts

Gable roof and hipped roof

The gable roof is the simplest and most common roof type: two slopes meeting at a ridge, with gables at the ends of the house. It is found on cottages, barns, churches and apartment buildings of every period, and therefore it seldom says anything about age. The pitch tells you more: medieval churches and Nordic timber houses often have very steep roofs, whereas the Karl Johan-period houses of the 19th century and the villas of the 1950s have low ones.

A hipped roof slopes on all four sides. The triangular surfaces over the short sides are called hips, and the house has no gables. If only the top of the gable is cut off, the roof is called half-hipped. The hipped roof gave a calmer and more costly impression and became common on 18th-century manor houses and vicarages, and then again on villas from the 1910s and 1920s, when architects liked to imitate the Swedish farmhouse of the 18th century.

The säteri roof: the Swedish roof

The säteri roof developed in Sweden in the 17th century and is one of the few roof types that can be called Swedish. The roof is broken in two parts, most often hipped, and between them sits a low, vertical wall, a frieze, with small windows that light the attic. The form makes the house look taller and more imposing. The name comes from säteri, a noble estate with tax exemption, and for a long time the roof was a sign of the nobility's status.

The best-known example is Riddarhuset in Stockholm, the House of Nobility, built in 1641–1674. During the Swedish Great Power period many manor houses around Lake Mälaren were given the same roof, and in the 18th century and later it spread to vicarages, town halls and farms. Säteri roofs are therefore also found today on fairly simple houses in the Mälaren Valley. If you see a house with a säteri roof it is either from the 17th or 18th century or, quite often, a later building that deliberately refers to the older Swedish tradition.

The mansard roof: from Paris to the stone city

The mansard roof takes its name from the French architect François Mansart (1598–1666), who made it popular, although the form was known earlier. The steep lower slope can have dormer windows, and the attic then holds almost a whole storey. In French the word mansarde also means an attic room. His relative Jules Hardouin-Mansart became Louis XIV's first architect and designed, among other things, the Église du Dôme des Invalides in Paris.

In Paris the mansard roof became the hallmark of the city when whole districts were rebuilt under Napoleon III in the 1850s and 1860s: five or six storeys of stone under a mansard roof of zinc with rows of dormer windows. The form came to Sweden in the 18th century and was used on manor houses and town houses. It returned in the Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque of the 19th century, on the tenements of the 'stone city' and on public buildings, and around 1910 on villas and terraced houses, when architects sought a way back to the Swedish farmhouses of the 18th century. A mansard roof on a villa therefore does not mean that the house is old; look at the rest of the house to decide whether it dates from the 18th century or is a later borrowing.

Monopitch roof and flat roof

The monopitch roof has only one slope, like a lectern. It is the natural roof on outbuildings, sheds and extensions leaning against a larger house, and in modern architecture it is used to bring in light on the high side and to give buildings a sharp, simple profile.

The flat roof was the sign of Functionalism. Le Corbusier counted the roof garden among his five points for a new architecture, and Villa Savoye outside Paris has one. In Sweden the flat roof made its breakthrough with the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. In the Nordic climate flat roofs proved difficult to keep watertight, and many Functionalist houses have since been given a low gable roof on top. Today green roofs of sedum plants are often laid on flat and shallow roofs to slow down rainwater.

The roofing is also a clue

The material of the roof is closely linked to its pitch. Turf roofs on birch bark were common in the countryside for a long time, and churches and fine houses were given roofs of tarred wooden shingles, which still glow brown on many church roofs and bell towers. Clay tiles require a certain pitch and became common in towns and in southern Sweden. Sheet metal can be laid shallower: copper weathers green over time and gives many city skylines their colour, while black-painted or red sheet iron became common in the 19th century.

All six roof types are drawn in the section on roofs in the basics and below. The roof's place in the whole is explained in the guides to the parts of a façade and what style a house is, and the terms can be found in the glossary.

How to tell the roof types apart

Exercise

What distinguishes a säteri roof from a mansard roof?