Gambrel Vs Mansard Roof

When it comes to technical terms you can call a mansard roof to be a four sided hip style gambrel roof.

Gambrel vs mansard roof.

If you are not familiar with a gambrel roof then let us first explain its architecture in brief. The sides can either be flat or curved depending on the style. Mansard roofs were considered especially practical because they allowed usable living quarters to be placed in the attic. This structure is more like a tent.

A gambrel or barn roof is much like mansard in a sense that it has two different slopes. The hip roof style features straight gentle slopes extending downwards on all four sides to the walls. Here s how to think about the two different slopes. Similar to mansard the lower side of the gambrel roof has an almost vertical steep slope while the upper slope is much lower.

For this reason older buildings were often remodeled with mansard roofs. A gambrel roof overhangs the façade whereas a mansard normally does not. Gambrels are not only seen on top of barns farm houses and log cabins. Similar to mansard the lower side of the gambrel roof has an almost vertical steep slope while the upper slope is much lower.

A mansard is a gable or hipped roof each of which was nodded. The cross section of a gambrel roof is similar to that of a mansard roof but a gambrel has vertical gable ends instead of being hipped at the four corners of the building. Simply put the mansard roof also known as the french roof or curb roof is a hybrid between a gambrel roof and a hip roof. The lower slope is much steeper than the upper.

The term gambrel is nowhere to be found nor can i find a translation for in in a dutch dictionary however on one site which details a wide variety of roof shapes we find the following entry for mansard dak dak like the german dach meaning roof. A gambrel roof has two sides with two slopes and the bottom slope is much steeper than the upper slope. In the united states second empire or mansard was a victorian style popular from the 1860s through the 1880s. You can consider gambrel roof to be a modified version of a gable roof.

However a gambrel roof only has 2 sides while a mansard roof has 4 sides. The difference between the two is that the gambrel only has two sides while the mansard has four. However the mansard is a curb hip roof with slopes on all sides of the building and the gambrel is a curb gable roof with slopes on only two sides. It is very similar to the gambrel roof style but this style utilizes all four sides of the house.

The lower side of the roof will have a steep slope almost vertical while the upper side of the roof will have a much lower slope.