Cladding a Conservatory Roof, Inside or Out
Installers use the word for two completely different jobs, one of which has a price and one of which does not. Both of them hide the roof you already have. Neither of them turns it into a roof that meets the standard for a house.
Internal cladding · per square metre · fitted · inc VAT
£85 to £180/m² outside: no published price
Thin evidenceDerived from two ceiling finish rows, one UK cost publisher, 2 July 2026. Checked 20 August 2026.
What conservatory roof cladding costs
Cladding the inside of a conservatory roof costs £85 to £180 per square metre fitted, including VAT, which is £1,050 to £1,450 on a 3m × 3m conservatory depending on whether the panels are aluminium or uPVC. Thin evidence: derived from two ceiling finish rows published by one UK cost publisher, 2 July 2026, checked 20 August 2026. Cladding the outside has no published price anywhere in the UK market.
No source prices “cladding” as a product. The figures below are fitted internal ceiling finish rates, read as cladding because that is the word the trade uses for the same work. The band is our union of two published rows, which makes it derived rather than quoted, and single-publisher either way. We would rather label that than present a rate as though somebody had measured the cladding market.
| What is clad, and with what | Per m², fitted | 3m × 3m total | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside, aluminium panel | £85 to £160 | £1,050 to £1,200 | Thin |
| Inside, uPVC | £95 to £180 | £1,200 to £1,450 | Thin |
| Inside, plastered rather than panelled | £145 to £275 | £2,200 to £2,750 | Thin |
| Outside, over the existing roof | no published price exists, from any publisher or manufacturer | Gap | |
Source: a single UK cost publisher, 2 July 2026, for the three internal rows, Thin evidence on each. Installed and including VAT. Checked 20 August 2026, next check due 20 November 2026. The bottom row is an absence, not a small number: we found no publisher, no manufacturer and no installer price list that quotes over-cladding an existing conservatory roof. Before you compare any of this, it is worth being sure which roof covering you have, and what it costs to insulate a conservatory roof prices the alternatives against each other.
Inside or out: two jobs behind one word
Ask which one is being quoted before you compare two prices, because they are not variants of the same work.
- Internal cladding, which is what almost everybody means. Interlocking aluminium or uPVC panels fixed to a frame under the existing roof, with insulation hidden above them. The polycarbonate or glass stays exactly where it is and you simply stop looking at it. This is the job the prices above cover.
- External over-cladding, boarding and covering the roof from above. A deck laid over or between the existing glazing bars and finished with a covering. Nobody publishes a price for it, and there is a structural reason to be careful with it that has nothing to do with money.
- Taking the roof off, which is a third thing entirely. Not cladding, and priced in a different bracket. If that is what is being described to you, it belongs under replacing a conservatory roof.
There is a regulatory line inside that second bullet worth having straight. While the conservatory stays a conservatory it is exempt from most of the Building Regulations under Schedule 2 Class 7, and panels fitted inside leave that alone completely, because the glazing is still there. Cover the glazing over from above and you are reducing how much of the roof is translucent. Reduce it significantly and the structure stops being the thing Class 7 describes: the envelope comes into scope, the roof becomes a thermal element that has to reach 0.15 W/m²K under Approved Document L Table 4.2, and the work goes to Local Authority Building Control or a Registered Building Control Approver. There is no percentage test any more, incidentally. The old 75 per cent roof and 50 per cent walls rule was withdrawn in 2010 and the live test is whether a significant proportion is glazed, decided case by case.
The test on a sales visit is short. Is the existing glazing staying in place? Will the new surface be seen from inside, outside, or both? And will anything be added to the load the frame already carries? Internal cladding answers yes, inside, and no. Anything else is one of the other two jobs wearing the word cladding.
What cladding actually does
It is a surface, and the useful things it does are the things a surface can do. It hides a roof that has gone yellow, green or streaked, which for a lot of people is the whole reason they started looking. It stops the drumming when it rains on polycarbonate. It takes the glare out of a room that was uncomfortable to sit in on a bright day. And because insulation goes in behind it, the room holds heat better in winter than it did.
That last one is real but modest, and it is worth being precise about which half of the year it helps. Cladding the inside makes February better. It does very little for July, because the solar gain still arrives through the same glazing and now has a lid underneath it. If the complaint is that the room is unbearable in August, this is the wrong purchase and no amount of panelling will change that.
It is also quick and it is reversible, which are underrated. A panelled ceiling goes up in about a day, it does not go to building control, and if you later replace the roof properly the panels come down again without having changed anything structural.
What cladding does not do
This is the half of the sales conversation that tends to go missing, and it is the reason this page exists.
Cladding a conservatory roof does not make it compliant, and it does not make the room habitable. Approved Document L Volume 1, 2021 with the 2023 amendments, Table 4.2, sets 0.15 W/m²K as the limiting value for a roof in an existing dwelling. Nobody publishes a measured U-value for a clad conservatory roof, so nobody can honestly tell you one reaches it. Anyone who does is selling.
| Element | U-value, W/m²K | Evidence | Named source |
|---|---|---|---|
| The polycarbonate roof left in place behind the cladding | 0.83 to 3.2 | Well | Brett Martin, Palram, Arla Plast and Ultraframe technical data |
| A clad conservatory roof, inside or out | no published figure | Gap | No publisher and no manufacturer states one |
| Roof in an existing dwelling, limiting value | 0.15 | Well | Approved Document L Vol 1, 2021 with 2023 amendments, Table 4.2 |
Sources: manufacturer technical literature for the polycarbonate band, which depends on the number of walls in the sheet rather than its thickness; Approved Document L Volume 1, Table 4.2, for the limiting value. Retrieved and checked 20 August 2026. Zero of the thirteen competing pages we surveyed publish any W/m²K figure for a clad-over roof, which is why the middle row is a gap. What Part L requires of a conservatory roof sets out the standard itself.
Three more things it does not do. It adds no load capacity: the frames, the ring beam and the base carry exactly what they carried before, and an external covering laid over the top adds weight to a structure that was designed for lightweight glazing. Published solid roof systems weigh 31 to 38 kg/m² (Reasonably evidenced, one manufacturer publishing two systems, checked 20 August 2026), which is the order of magnitude a frame has to be checked against before anything solid goes on top. It adds no habitable floor area and appears on no EPC. And it can create a condensation problem it did not solve, because any surface fixed below the roof makes a cold void above itself in a room with almost no background ventilation.
Price the roof underneath it
Six questions, roof condition first, phone number last. They live on the calculator, not on this page.
Cladding is a decision about whether the roof you have is worth keeping. The only way to answer that is to know what replacing it would cost, so get both numbers before you commit to either.
see what a new roof would cost you
Or get quotes for your roof and ask each installer to price cladding it and replacing it on the same visit.
Check what your roof will cost, or go straight to a conservatory roof quote. We pass your details to vetted installers so they can quote, and we are paid when they do. how we make money.
Where cladding sits against the neighbouring jobs
Cladding is the product word. The job word for the same work, with the frame, the insulation and the finish described properly, is a false ceiling in a conservatory, and that is where the fitting mechanics and the headroom question live. If it is the boards themselves you are trying to compare rather than the finished surface, that is conservatory insulated panels, priced by material and with what is known about their U-values, which is less than the marketing implies.
At the far end, a tiled or solid roof at 3m × 3m is £6,000 to £11,000 installed including VAT. Well evidenced, four publishers agreeing within 1.05x on the floor, checked 20 August 2026. That is roughly five times an aluminium clad ceiling at the same size, and the multiple is honest: it buys a structure that reaches 0.15 W/m²K, goes to building control, and fixes July as well as February.
Cleaning the roof you were about to cover up
Worth saying because it is the cheapest test available. If what started this was a roof that looks green, streaked or grubby rather than a room that is cold, then cladding the inside hides the view and leaves the outside exactly as it was, still growing algae and still shedding light through it. Clean it first and you find out whether the problem was the roof or the look of the roof, for a fraction of the money and with nothing fixed permanently in place.
How that is done, and when a roof is past it, is cleaning it instead of replacing it. If the panels are cracked, crazed or leaking at the bars, cleaning will not save them and cladding over the top will hide a leak rather than stop it.
Questions people ask first
How much does it cost to clad a conservatory roof?
Can you clad over the outside of a conservatory roof?
Does cladding a roof meet building regulations?
Is cladding the same as an insulated ceiling?
Will cladding stop my conservatory getting too hot?
Will cladding hide a leak?
Every figure on this page was last checked 20 August 2026, next check due 20 November 2026. Every price row rests on a single publisher and is derived from rows published as ceiling finishes, which is stated on the table rather than buried here. For the wider picture, see conservatory cost.
Find out what yours costs
Six questions, about sixty seconds, and an estimate built from published UK figures with every source shown. Then up to four local installers can quote you, if you want them to.