Hip

ARMA's Residential Asphalt Roofing Manual gives the word two glossary entries, and they describe different things. The first is a line: “Hip: The inclined external angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes. Runs from the ridge to the eaves.” The second is a whole roof: “Hip Roof: A type of roof containing sloping planes on each of four sides. Contains no gables.”

The line is easiest to place against its neighbors. Like the ridge, a hip is an external angle, a joint where the two planes fall away from each other. The difference is direction. The ridge is the horizontal line along the peak; a hip is inclined, dropping from the ridge down to a lower corner of the roof. A valley is the opposite kind of joint: both glossaries define it as the internal angle where two sloping planes meet, so water runs into it instead of off it.

The shape follows from the line. A hip roof, in ARMA's terms, slopes on all four sides, so wherever two of those sides meet at a corner, a hip runs down between them. ARMA's gable roof is the contrast: a simple two-sided roof above a gable, and the FRSA-TRI tile manual describes a gable roof as one with sloping sides and vertical ends. A roof that ends in a vertical wall at each end has no corner slopes to meet, and so no hips there.

The FRSA-TRI Florida High Wind Concrete and Clay Tile Installation Manual files its definition under a heading that reads hip roof, and the text under that heading describes the line, not the shape: “The exterior sloping ridge formed by the intersection of two inclined roof surfaces.” ARMA calls the joint an inclined external angle and the tile manual calls it a sloping ridge. Both are describing the same place on the roof.

The same glossary shows why a hip on a tile roof is built differently from the open slope beside it. It defines a hip and/or ridge member as a “Wood, metal or plastic frame installed on a hip or ridge to provide a surface for installation of hip and ridge tiles.” The hip tiles sit on that frame, and the tile at a hip is cut to fit the joint, which is why TRI Alliance's walking rule calls the tiles there specially cut.

Profile names come from other sources, and they do not all agree. InterNACHI's tile roof inspection course sorts tile as low, medium or high profile: low-profile tile is flat or close to flat, medium-profile tile may be S-shaped, and high-profile tile is typically barrel. Eagle Roofing Products calls its high barrel tile an S-tile. The hip is the same joint under any of those names.

On a tile roof the hip turns up mostly as a place to stay off. TRI Alliance's Roof Maintenance Guide says: “Avoid walking on hips or valleys to prevent damage to specially cut tiles that are more difficult to replace.” The reason is in the construction: a tile shaped to fit one hip line is not interchangeable with the tiles out on the slope.

Eagle Roofing Products' 2025 article on walking a tile roof gives the same rule with one exception. Where “the hips and ridges are bedded in mortar or foam” they may be preferred walking paths, Eagle says. So the two sources differ on one point, and neither can say which hips on a particular roof are bedded; that is read on the roof, by a roofing contractor.

Both sources also describe how to step on tile when walking cannot be avoided. The full technique, from where the foot lands to which way it points, is set out under whether anyone walks on the roof during cleaning.

If a cut tile at a hip does crack, who replaces it, and how soon the tile sources want it done, is covered in whether fixing broken roof tiles is a roof cleaner's job.