Simple Hip Roofs

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A simple hip roof, or hipped roof, is a four-sided roof that has sloping ends and sides, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Hip roofs on rectangular houses will have two triangular sides and two trapezoidal ones, and they often have dormers. They have the advantage of giving a compact, solid appearance to a structure.

This style of roof has a long and distinguished architectural history. While it was often used alone in an architectural design, a simple hipped roof is often employed either in combination with a gabled roof or as an alternative to a gabled roof.

In modern domestic architecture, hipped roofs have been seen to represent comfort, practicality, and solidness. They are thus commonly seen in bungalows and cottages, and have been integral to styles such as the American Foursquare, a style of home popular from 1900 to the 1920s.

In more recent times, hipped roofs were included in the design of many Ranch styles homes, a style that was developed in California in the mid-1930s and continued to be extremely popular until the mid-1970s.

Hip roofs are more difficult to construct, requiring somewhat more complex systems of trusses, but they can be constructed on a wide variety of plan shapes.

A particularly good style of roof to have in a very sunny place, hip roof helps to shade all of the walls of the building, unlike a gable roof which has minimal overhangs at the gables.

A hip roof is also ideal to have in hurricane regions, especially if the slope of the roof from horizontal is 35 degrees or greater (to reduce/eliminate the airfoil effect of extreme high winds that blow over the roof) as they are far less likely to peel off the house than a gable end roof.

Hip Roofs / Pyramid Hip Roof / Cross Hipped / Mansard Roof / Gable Roofs / Cross Gabled Roofs / Saltbox Roofs / Flat Roofs / Gambrel Roofs