Most homeowners who ask us about DaVinci have already gotten a number, and the number surprised them. A DaVinci roof runs two to three times what an architectural asphalt roof costs. That’s a real gap, and it deserves a real answer rather than a sales pitch.
Here’s what DaVinci actually is, what it does well, where it doesn’t make sense, and how it holds up on a house in the Chicago area.
What DaVinci Shingles Actually Are
DaVinci makes composite shingles out of virgin resin — an engineered polymer — with UV inhibitors and fire retardants mixed into the material itself, not sprayed on the surface. They’re molded from real slate and hand-split cedar shake, so the surface texture and thickness variation come from actual tiles and shakes rather than a repeating pattern.
The main product lines you’ll see:
- Multi-Width Slate and Single-Width Slate — the slate look, in varying widths for a more natural roof face
- Multi-Width Shake and Select Shake — the cedar look, roughly 1/2″ to 3/4″ thick at the butt
- Bellaforté Slate and Bellaforté Shake — an interlocking system with a built-in gauge, faster to install, rated a bit higher for wind
All of them install with standard roofing nails over standard decking and underlayment. No special substructure, no additional framing.
The Weight Question Matters Here
Real slate weighs 800 to 1,500 pounds per square (100 square feet). Most Chicago-area homes built in the last century weren’t framed for that. If you want a slate roof on a house that wasn’t designed for one, you’re paying an engineer and a carpenter before you pay a roofer.
DaVinci runs about 250 pounds per square. That’s heavier than asphalt but light enough that virtually any house that can carry an asphalt roof can carry DaVinci without structural work. For a lot of homeowners in Oak Park, Hinsdale, Evanston, and the older North Shore neighborhoods, that’s the whole reason the product exists — you get the look of slate or cedar on a frame that couldn’t hold the real thing.
How It Performs in Chicago Weather
This is where the product earns or doesn’t earn its price.
Hail. DaVinci carries a Class 4 impact rating, the highest in the UL 2218 test. That test involves dropping a two-inch steel ball on the shingle from twenty feet. Asphalt shingles crack or lose granules under that; the composite flexes and takes the hit. We get hail in DuPage, Kane, and Will counties most years, and it’s the single most common reason we’re writing storm damage claims. A Class 4 roof doesn’t make you hail-proof, but it substantially reduces the odds you’re replacing the roof again in eight years.
Worth calling your insurance carrier about — many Illinois insurers offer a premium discount for Class 4 impact-resistant roofing. It won’t pay for the upgrade, but it takes a bite out of it over time.
Wind. Standard DaVinci profiles are rated to 110 mph. Bellaforté is rated to 110 mph as well with the interlocking design adding mechanical resistance beyond the fastener. Lake-effect wind on an exposed lot in Winnetka or Beverly is hard on asphalt tabs; the composite tiles are thicker and stiffer and don’t lift the same way.
Freeze-thaw. This is the one people underestimate. Chicago goes above and below freezing dozens of times each winter. Water gets into asphalt, freezes, expands, and works the mat apart. Real slate spalls the same way. DaVinci’s polymer doesn’t absorb water, so freeze-thaw cycling doesn’t degrade the material. That’s a genuine advantage in this climate that you won’t see in a warm-weather market.
Ice dams. DaVinci doesn’t fix ice dams. Nothing on the surface of the roof does. Ice dams come from heat escaping the living space into the attic, melting snow that refreezes at the cold eave. If you have an ice dam problem, you have an insulation and ventilation problem, and putting an expensive roof over it just means you paid more for the same leak. We’ll always look at your attic before we quote a roof this size.
The Fifty-Year Warranty
DaVinci offers a 50-year limited lifetime material warranty, and it’s transferable one time. The color-fade coverage is separate and typically runs shorter, so read the actual document rather than the brochure.
A word on what warranties do and don’t cover: material warranties cover material defects. They don’t cover installation errors, and installation errors cause far more roof failures than defective shingles. Whatever you decide on material, the crew flashing your chimney and sidewalls matters more to whether the roof leaks than the shingle brand does.
What It Costs
In the Chicagoland market, expect roughly $16 to $26 per square foot installed for DaVinci, depending on profile, roof complexity, pitch, story height, tear-off, and how much flashing and metal work the house needs. A straightforward architectural asphalt roof runs closer to $5 to $9 per square foot.
On a 2,400-square-foot roof surface, that’s a difference in the range of $25,000 to $40,000. That’s not a small decision, and anybody who tells you it obviously pays for itself is doing arithmetic you should check.
When DaVinci Makes Sense
You’re staying in the house. If you plan to be there 20-plus years, you’re likely buying one roof instead of two. Architectural asphalt in this climate realistically gives you 18 to 25 years, less if you take hail. DaVinci should outlast that by a wide margin.
The house calls for it. Tudors, Colonials, Victorians, and shingle-style homes in the older suburbs look wrong under three-tab asphalt. If you’re in a neighborhood where slate and cedar are the norm, the roof affects what the house is worth, not just what it costs.
You had cedar and you’re tired of it. Cedar shake in Illinois needs treatment, has fire exposure, and grows moss on the north face. DaVinci shake gives you the profile with a Class A fire rating and no maintenance cycle.
You keep getting hailed on. If you’ve filed two hail claims in a decade, your carrier knows it and so do you. Class 4 is a reasonable response.
Your house can’t carry real slate. Covered above. This is often the deciding factor.
When It Doesn’t
You’re selling in five years. You won’t get the money back. Put a good architectural shingle on it, do the flashing and ventilation right, and move on.
The roof is a simple ranch with low visibility. If nobody sees the roof and the house doesn’t have architectural character, you’re paying for a look you don’t get.
Your budget is tight and something else is failing. A roof that keeps water out is a roof that keeps water out. If the money would be better spent on tuckpointing, windows, or an attic that’s underinsulated at R-19, spend it there first. We’d rather tell you that than sell you a roof you resent.
You want to phase the work. DaVinci isn’t something to install on half a house. Color lots and weathering make later matching difficult.
What We Look at Before Quoting One
Before we’d put DaVinci on your house, we’d want to see:
- The condition of the decking, especially on homes with 1×6 board sheathing rather than plywood
- Your attic ventilation — intake at the soffits as well as exhaust at the ridge, not just one or the other
- Existing flashing at chimneys, dormers, and wall intersections, since we’d want to replace it in metal that lasts as long as the roof
- Valleys, and whether an open metal valley makes more sense than a woven one for the profile
A fifty-year roof over rotted decking or into a chimney with tar-patched counterflashing is a fifty-year roof with a ten-year leak in it. The detail work has to match the material.
The Short Version
DaVinci is a good product that costs a lot of money. It’s worth it when you’re staying in the house, the architecture supports it, and you’d otherwise be looking at real slate you can’t structurally carry or cedar you don’t want to maintain. It’s not worth it when you’re moving soon, the roof has no visual presence, or the money would do more good in your attic.
If you want a real number for your house rather than a range, we’ll get on the roof, look at the decking and the attic, and give you both the DaVinci figure and the asphalt figure so you can compare them side by side. Which one you pick after that is your call.