Mansard Roof Ideas – Advantages & Disadvantages

No matter how much effort you put in decorating your house, your roof will take big part of the effect. Roof will be the first and most important part of your house before you decide what theme of decoration you want to install. Roof can be an outer conclusion to your house theme decoration as every roof reflects its glorious time and design.

Every country has different weather and climate condition. This is one of the reason why choosing the right roof design is important. The main purpose of roof itself is not for decoration but for your house cover and to make sure that everyone inside is safe from every dangerous part of outside thing that might harm.

To this reason, it is fair to say that choosing one roof design is not only choosing the whole house decoration but also its safety.

Some roof designs are not suitable for some areas with distinctive character like wind, snow, rain fall or even laws. Mansard is one of roof designs that is forbidden in some areas due to its risk that might be harmful to your surrounding.

But why mansard style might have such high risk to surrounding that laws forbid this roof? To answer this question first you have to know the most basic information about mansard roof which is the definition. Also mansard house has so many advantages and disadvantages that will be explained down below:

Table of Contents

What is Mansard Roof?

Architecture ideas with mansard roof
poppingtonart.com

Mansard roof is a gambrel roof shape that is consisted of four side slopes. However the unique thing about mansard roof is it has two slopes for every side.

So let’s say it is divided into two slopes the bottom one is rather flat to the ground and the upper one is not as biased as the bottom one. This type of mansard has flat area on top of them so there is no a point where two four sides meets on top.

Mansard Roof Types

Dampierre en Yvelines Chateau Mansard Roof
wikipedia.org

There is no specific type of mansard roof though. Official name of mansard roof is mansard as part of gambrel roof shape. So mansard is basically always has the same final look.

Mansard style always come with four sides with double slopes for each sides. There is no other types of mansard roof.only the way you adopt this when your house is not one perfect block.

Mansard Roof Style

Mansard roof London
thetimes.co.uk

Styling for Mansard roof is also similar to each other almost in every country. Different style might happened when you have different house shape.

Those houses with 2 or 3 boxes shape might happened different style due to different shape. But this is a very rare style though. Originally mansard roof is for one bpx house so people will directly copy the shape.

Mansard Roof Framing

Simple mansard roof
readreidread.wordpress.com

Framing for mansard style is harder than you thought. It is highly suggested if you use a professional hand for mansard roof framing.

Calculation for mansard roof is not only limited to its height but also its effect to your home internally. Since mansard roof will give you free spaces later, some professionals will consider every possible risk that might occur.

Mansard Roof Advantages and Disadvantages

There are always advantage and disadvantage for everything. To begin with, there are so many good reasons to why you should install mansard house for your house or building.

Advantages

Mansard roof opener
oldhouseonline.com

It has Luxurious Look

Mansard roof is famous as part of French architecture history back then in 16th century. To this reason, there are so many left over famous building that uses mansard roof shape.

This is why it impacts people impression towards the roof. This roof is inviting luxurious and vintage nuance into the building. Your exterior will look modern too if you set it that way.

Give You Additional Space

As mansard is a high roof type, it will give you additional space because you do not have to cover your ceiling and cut the left over space unused. Mansard house has four sides that have not one point meeting.

It means you can use the left over space for your second floor or even small room. Left over space from mansard roof is just as wide as your real house size so you don’t have to worry if it is not worth it.

Evenly Spread Natural Light

Mansard house will allow you to spread natural light and heat evenly into the room. There are some roof shapes that can not let sun light touch your house.

Mansard style is not the type of roof that cant install more windows in their roof. So usually people will install windows on their bottom slopes so sun light can come light the house.

Disadvantages

Mansard roof
really-bad-design.blogspot.co.id

Those are some good reasons to why you should try to install mansard ceiling for your house. However you should also reconsider some disadvantages. Here are some things you should remember before installing mansard roof:

Fragile to Windy Climate

Mansard roof is not resistant to heavy weather especially the windy one. it might torn apart your roof. So if you have this heavy weather problem in your living area, you are highly suggested to never try mansard style due to its risk that might harm you and your neighborhood.

Law Restriction

There are some laws for several areas where civilians are restricted to install mansard house. So before you install this roof, you have to make sure that it is allowed by local rules.

Usually they did not specifically said mansard roof type but there is maximum roof height that you have to check for everyone’s safety.

Time Consuming Installation

Another thing to consider is that mansard ceiling installation is much longer in time rather than the rest types of roofs.

So it is not only has higher risk to heavy weather, the installation also takes longer times and you have to re check every some other times that your mansard house is okay. Mansard roofs also need good maintenance.

High Cost

Mansard house has higher cost not only because of the material but also the installation and maintenance cost. Due to the longer time it takes for mansard style to get installed, it will cost higher.

Also, the maintenance for mansard style is much more often rather than the other types of roof. This is why mansard house takes higher cost.

You can read other roof type, for example thatched roof house.

Mansard Roof Image

We collected some of best mansard roof ideas with images to inspire you. So basically all these images are illustration to what mansard roof looks like from your house exterior. These inspiring ideas will be a perfect example of how to adopt your house shape with the perfect mansard shape or style.

Vintage Mansard Roof

Cape May Victorian architecture
nj.com

This architecture looks like a vintage theme house. As you can see they set their roof high. It will give you more left over space from it so you can have third floor. But this shape is not the original one.

Even so, it looks like a perfect vintage house theme you will ever see. Besides, it will allow you to have more shape combination rather than the flat original one so this idea is not bad.

More Windows More Light

Mansard Roofs
recreated.ca

The plus point about mansard roof is light. Mansard ceiling will allow you to install more windows as much as you think you need it.

Evenly light circulation is important to make sure that your home is not too dark and clean. Enough lighting source will impact the air circulation too. The more light you get, the better. There will be no more smelly room in your house.

Painted Mansard Roof

Exterior mansard roof with brick wall
ganecovillage.org

Here is the paint idea for your mansard house. There is no restriction to paint your roof. Instead, painted roof is a creative idea to make your house more colorful.

There is limited roof material that comes with variety colors. So it is a unique roof to have it painted with such colors you prefer. You can explore and reflect yourself better with this.

Black Modern Roof

Rustic Mansard
asktoddmiller.com

So here is another idea for your mansard house. For the record, mansard dome will always give you more left over space.

The important thing about this idea is that you can have as limited wall as possible and still have spacious home. There is no point break in this idea. As long as you still have similar space when you use bigger wall, so everything is fine.

Metal Mansard Roof

495 Broadway In SoHo
mountainsoftravelphotos.com

Mansard house material is various. Metal is one of the material you can use though. The pro point of mental material is it is a lot more cost effective rather than any other ideas.

Loft House

Roof design for different exterior
ganecovillage.org

But as consequence, metal mansard truss is noisy when it is rain fall. And it seems like metal roof is not as durable as the other materials. So you might have to find out if it is okay to use this material or not.

Imagine you can maximize every space in your house? That would be great. You can maximize every possible space in your house if you use this loft type house.

Using mansard style will allow you to have loft house. This is one of the reasons why mansard house is beneficial even though it cost high due to its maintenance. But at least you can have left over spacious space as exchange.

Modern Mansard Roof

Roof design
theappside.com

Here is updated idea for modern mansard house. To pull off this look, you can combine your roof with modern house decoration.

With navy roof and white house you can invite such modern look into your home even though mansard house is a vintage architecture. For specific detail, this house decoration uses updated decoration which impacts the house final overall look.

Union Square Manhattan

Building Roofs NYC
ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com

Roof Dormer

Retro roof style
crashingnightingale.com

Classic Black Roof

Classic roof
recreated.ca

Mansard Roof Interior Design

As it is stated before, mansard house will give you free additional space as exchange. Left over space from mansard ceiling is not a small or tiny room.

You can make it as whatever room you want to because it is as wide as your house size. Here are some images to how it looks like inside the mansard house left over space.

Mansard Roof as Gathering Room

Chalet di Giano Mansard Living room
homedit.com

Decorating left over space from mansard dome can be as any room you would like. Even for gathering room, mansard house left over space is spacious enough.

It is not a lie when people said you can have second floor from mansard ceiling left over space. It is because mansard roof is gambrel roof so you don’t have to cover the whole ceiling and cut the left over space as unusable space.

Mansard Space as Bedroom

Chalet small bedroom
homedit.com

You can also build a bedroom in your mansard house. It can be as cozy as you want if your decorate them right. The point about mansard house left over space is, it is spacious.

You don’t have to worry if it cant be the room you want to. Even you can have a guest bedroom with this or maybe something way more beneficial like library or home theater.

Higher Mansard Room

Apartment in Paris
cutedecision.com

Here is an illustration of left over space from mansard dome if you set it higher. This is also the same for those mansard roofs that is higher than the wall of your house.

You can have a rustic lovely gathering room from it. As usually for roof, wood is the main material that people prefer due to its low risk, to make a rustic room out of left over mansard ceiling space is a great idea worth to try.

Cozy Bedroom

Double room
familyselecthotels.com

You can redesign left over mansard ceiling space as a bedroom. There is no limitation to what room you can build from these left over spaces of your mansard roof.

Redesigning it will give you more benefits as you can have a better beneficial room rather than cutting them as ceiling. You don’t have to think of the light source too because mansard house will allow you to have more windows installed on them.

Light Room

Cozy Mansard Home by Ruetemple ruetemple.ru
Cozy Mansard Home by Ruetemple | Photo © Ruetemple – From: ruetemple.ru

Large Living Room

The mansard apartment Bernd Gruber
The mansard apartment | © Bernd Gruber – From: bestdesignideas.com

1 thought on “Mansard Roof Ideas – Advantages & Disadvantages”

  1. It is pretty evident that the biggest advantage that you can get with Mansard roofing is the flexibility of adding rooms in the future due to its distinctive design. Even after knowing all the disadvantages, many people in the modern world prefer Mansard roofs for its advantages and a traditional classy look.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.