When it comes to roof designs, there are two main styles that are being used nowadays: straight roofing styles, including pitched, skillion and hipped and curved roofing styles, that can be cranked, convex, old gothic and sandwich.

Should one choose steel as a building material for the roof, there is a large variety of designs available, as steel is very versatile.

For example, when speaking about straight roofs, pitched ones are the roofs whose sloping sections are designed to meet at a peak in the middle of the structure. But if you choose a pitched roof, that is the way most roofs are built, you most not forget about the drainage along the bottom of each section.

Another type of roof is the hipped one, which is also a pitched roof, with the single difference that it has more than two sections that meet each other at hips. If you need to imagine how such a hipped roof may look like, think of an L-shaped roof and you will need no further explanation.

Skillon roofs is different from the pitched roofs, as it is made of a single continuous piece of steel. It is a single section roof, that can be made at a very shallow angle, as low as one degree to the horizontal.

Now, getting to the curved roofing style, we must start with the cranked roofs. They are made of a single piece of steel with a curve on top. You can surely see the difference from the pitched roofs. This type of roofs allows the building of cavernous attics or high ceilings under the roofs, thus gaining more space for the owner of the house.

I will continue with the old gothic style roof. An old gothic roof makes use of both a concave and convex curve in the one steel sheet. Convex roofs are also included in the curved roofing style and obviously have a convex shape!

Sandwich roofs have two skins of steel glued onto a polystyrene core: one skin for the roof and another for the internal ceiling, thus providing for insulation.

So, now that you have become a bit familiar with the types of roofs you can choose from, deciding for the perfect one is not so difficult a task anymore. The roof you settle for must only meet your demands and its a done thing! Just keep on looking until you are perfectly happy.