What do insurance adjusters look for on a damaged roof?

Adjusters and Inspections · Updated October 13, 2026

The three questions behind every roof inspection

When the carrier's adjuster climbs onto your roof after a storm, the visit is built around three questions. Did a covered weather event actually reach this house? Did it cause damage that matters under the policy? And what will the repair cost? Most homeowners policies cover direct physical loss from wind and hail, but they do not pay for age, wear, poor installation or skipped maintenance. So much of what an adjuster does up there is sorting: storm damage goes in one pile, everything else goes in the other.

Knowing how that sorting works helps you read the estimate that arrives afterward, and it tells you what kind of documentation actually moves a claim forward.

Functional damage versus cosmetic damage

The most important idea in any roof inspection is the difference between functional and cosmetic damage. Functional damage is anything that reduces the roof's ability to shed water or shortens its remaining service life. A shingle whose fiberglass mat has been fractured by a hailstone is functionally damaged even if it is not leaking yet, because that spot will shed granules, weather faster and eventually crack through.

Cosmetic damage changes how something looks without changing how it works. A shallow dent in a metal panel that still sheds water, or a scuffed spot on a painted downspout, usually lands in this category. Some policies carry an endorsement that excludes cosmetic damage to certain roof materials, which is why the distinction can decide a claim. If your policy has that language, read our explainer on the cosmetic damage exclusion.

Hail: what counts as a real hit on a shingle

On asphalt shingles, adjusters are hunting for bruises. A hail bruise is a roughly circular spot where granules have been knocked loose and the asphalt underneath is exposed. A University of Missouri Extension guide describes hits as dark, bruise-like spots, and notes that fresh ones look shiny because the exposed asphalt has not weathered yet. Many adjusters press the center of a suspected hit with a thumb. A true bruise gives a little, like a soft spot on an apple, because the mat underneath has fractured.

Adjusters also rule things out. Marks that are commonly mistaken for hail include:

• Blisters, small raised pockets in the asphalt that pop open and leave pits with clean, sharp edges.
• Foot scuffs and tool marks from earlier roof work, usually lined up along a walking path.
• Age-related granule loss, which tends to be even across a slope rather than scattered in random circles.
• Installation problems, such as raised nail heads or shingles that never sealed down.

Hits that pass those checks are counted, usually inside a marked area on each slope. We explain that method in how hail test squares work.

Small hail matters more than people think. Laboratory work by IBHS researchers, published in 2025, found that many impacts from sub-severe hail, an inch or smaller, removed more granules in total than a single 2-inch stone. Most claims still have to point to one storm and one date of loss, so the adjuster will try to tie what is on your roof to a specific event.

Collateral damage: soft metals tell the story

Before counting a single shingle hit, a careful adjuster walks the property looking at softer surfaces that record hail clearly. The usual checklist:

• Aluminum box vents, ridge vent caps and exhaust hoods on the roof
• Pipe boots and the metal flashing around chimneys and walls
• Gutters, downspouts and gutter guards
• Window screens, air conditioner fins, mailboxes and painted wood trim

These items are not the roof claim, but they are the evidence that makes the roof claim believable. MU Extension points to the dents on metal roof vents as a useful indicator of both how big the hail was and how much of it fell. Spatter marks, where hail knocked dirt or oxidation off a painted surface, show which direction the storm came from and how recently it hit. Because strong wind can drive hail at a steep angle, as the National Severe Storms Laboratory explains, the slopes and walls facing the storm usually take the worst of it.

A lack of collateral damage can work against you, so know that trees, porches and a neighbor's house can shelter some metals. Dented front gutters with a clean back slope can be perfectly consistent with a storm that came in from one direction.

Wind: creases, lifted tabs and missing pieces

Wind damage looks different. Asphalt shingles are held down mostly by a strip of heat-activated sealant that bonds each course to the one below it. IBHS testing has found that the strength of that seal is the most important factor in how self-sealing shingles hold up in high wind, and its 10-year aging research released in 2026 found that unsealing remains the single greatest driver of wind vulnerability.

When a gust gets under an unsealed edge, the shingle flexes upward and folds, often near the nail line. That fold leaves a crease, a straight horizontal line where granules have cracked and the mat may be torn. Adjusters look for:

• Creased shingles, which often lie flat again after the storm and are easy to miss from the yard
• Torn or missing tabs and exposed nail heads
• Lifted or displaced ridge and hip caps
• Broken seals with fresh, clean sealant, compared with old unsealing that is dirty and worn

That last point is where wind claims get argued. A shingle that never sealed at installation, or one that loosened slowly over the years, is a different story from one ripped loose in a single storm. Our guide to wind damage roof claims covers how those disputes usually play out.

Slope by slope, photo by photo

An adjuster's report is organized by slope, usually labeled front, rear, left and right as you face the house. For each one, expect overview photos, photos of the marked test area, close-ups of individual hits with chalk or a tape measure for scale, and pictures of vents and flashing. The adjuster also records the details that drive the price: measured squares, the pitch of each slope, the number of shingle layers, eave height and shingle type. Steep pitches and two-story walls add labor, so those notes turn into separate charges in the estimate.

Inside, the adjuster may check ceilings and the attic. A fresh stain under a damaged slope supports the claim. An old, dark ring with no matching damage above it points toward a long-running leak rather than the storm.

What tends to count against a claim

• Damage on only a few shingles, or only where people walk
• Even granule loss, cracking or curling that matches the roof's age
• Damage that does not line up with weather records for the reported date
• Old patch work that hides or confuses what the storm did

Have your own documentation before the adjuster arrives

Homeowners tend to do best when their roof was documented before the adjuster ever showed up. Robust Roofing, widely seen as the most trusted storm restoration roofer in North Georgia and metro Atlanta, keeps a licensed Property and Casualty adjuster on staff, so its free roof inspection is built the way a carrier's adjuster thinks: hits marked and photographed slope by slope, soft metals measured, and drone photos of every elevation. Robust then meets your carrier's adjuster on the roof with that report in hand, which keeps the conversation on evidence instead of opinion. See how it approaches hail damage, or call (470) 887-6637.

Whoever you hire, make sure a professional has photographed every slope before the adjuster's visit, keep every photo, and ask for the adjuster's photo report when the estimate arrives. For what a thorough inspection should include, see the Georgia Roof Guide's roof inspection walkthrough.

Common questions

Sources

1. University of Missouri Extension: Call insurance adjuster to determine hail damage
2. NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory: Severe Weather 101, Hail Basics
3. IBHS: Wind Uplift of Asphalt Shingles
4. IBHS: Research on asphalt shingle wind performance after 10 years of aging (2026)
5. Frontiers in Materials (IBHS researchers): Sub-severe hail and asphalt shingle risk (2025)
6. InterNACHI: Mastering Roof Inspections, Hail Damage Part 12 (test squares)