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INDUSTRY REPORTS · August 15, 2026

Roofing Underlayment Market Size and Share Report 2026

Roofing underlayment market size 2026: five vendor estimates span $19.8bn to $33.6bn. We audit them against ARMA shingle volumes and SEC filings.

By The Roofing Brief Team

By The Roofing Brief Team. Last reviewed: August 2026.

Every published roofing underlayment market size figure we could verify is a global number from a market research vendor that discloses no methodology, and the five we found disagree by 70 percent. No government agency measures this product. No public company reports revenue for it. This report separates what is actually measurable about US underlayment demand from what is being sold as a market estimate, and shows the arithmetic for both.

Executive summary

  • Five vendor estimates of the global roofing underlayment market range from $19.76 billion to $33.6 billion, a high to low ratio of 1.70 and a coefficient of variation of 19.3 percent (Roofing Brief calculation from the vendor pages listed below).
  • None of the five publishes a US or North America dollar figure. The only regional quantification we found anywhere is a statement that North America is “almost 25%” of the global market, from Business Research Insights.
  • No US federal statistical series measures roofing underlayment. The closest is a Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for asphalt felts inside NAICS 324122. Synthetic underlayment sits in plastics and textiles classifications and is statistically invisible.
  • The measurable physical base is US asphalt shingle demand: 160 million squares in 2024, of which 135 million squares was re-roof and storm work, per Owens Corning’s May 2025 investor day, sourced to ARMA and Owens Corning management estimates.
  • ARMA reported US shingle shipments fell 10.3 percent in 2025 and 4.7 percent in the first half of 2026, to 82,968,064 squares.
  • Applying the vendors’ own 25 percent North America share to their global figures implies underlayment sells for roughly $32 to $54 per roofing square in North America, or $315 to $536 per ten square roll (Roofing Brief calculation).
  • Those same implied figures put the North America underlayment market at 1.17 to 1.99 times the entire North America Roofing segment revenue of Owens Corning, the largest US shingle manufacturer (Roofing Brief calculation).
  • Producer prices for asphalt felt rose 49.4 percent from 2020 to July 2026. Plastics film and sheet, a proxy for synthetic underlayment substrate, rose 46.3 percent over the same window, with most of the catch up occurring in 2026 (Roofing Brief calculation from BLS PPI).

Key findings

  1. US asphalt shingle market, 2024: 160 million squares, split 135 million re-roof and storm and 25 million new construction. Source: Owens Corning Investor Day Roofing presentation, May 2025, page 34, footnoted “ARMA, OC Management Estimates.”
  2. Re-roof and storm accounted for more than 80 percent of Owens Corning roofing demand, and laminate shingles were 95 percent of demand, per the same presentation (2024, United States).
  3. ARMA reported US shingle shipments of 44,838,320 squares in Q2 2026, up 0.2 percent from 44,743,390 squares in Q2 2025. First half 2026 was 82,968,064 squares, down 4.7 percent. Source: Roofing Contractor, 27 July 2026.
  4. ARMA reported a 10.3 percent decline in shipments for full year 2025 and a 27.9 percent decline in Q4 2025 versus Q4 2024, as disclosed in Alpha Pro Tech’s FY2025 Form 10-K.
  5. US asphalt shingle shipments fell 9.9 percent in Q1 2026 to 38.1 million squares, from 42.3 million in Q1 2025. Source: Roofing Contractor, 24 April 2026, citing ARMA.
  6. Owens Corning Roofing segment net sales were $4,437 million in FY2025, down 4 percent from $4,630 million in FY2024. North America Roofing was $4,228 million. Source: Owens Corning FY2025 Form 10-K.
  7. The word “underlayment” appears zero times in the Owens Corning FY2025 10-K and zero times in the Amrize FY2025 10-K. Carlisle names underlayment as a product of its Weatherproofing Technologies segment three times but attaches no revenue figure.
  8. Alpha Pro Tech is the only US public issuer that quantifies roofing underlayment as a share of sales: 38 percent of a $36,031,000 Building Supply segment in FY2025, versus 42 percent of $35,965,000 in FY2024. Source: Alpha Pro Tech FY2025 Form 10-K.
  9. Beacon Roofing Supply, the largest US roofing distributor, reported $4,833.5 million of residential roofing products in FY2024, 49.5 percent of $9,763.2 million total net sales. Source: Beacon FY2024 Form 10-K.
  10. US producer prices for prepared asphalt and tar roofing products including saturated felts stood at 380.338 in July 2026, versus a 2020 annual average of 254.5. Source: BLS PPI series PCU3241223241222.
  11. Total US housing units reached 149,454,000 in Q2 2026, with 133,811,000 occupied and 86,985,000 owner occupied. Source: Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey, release CB26-116, 28 July 2026.
  12. US housing completions totalled 1,488,500 units in 2025, including 1,004,800 single family. Completions in the first half of 2026 were 657,300, down 9.5 percent year over year. Source: Census Bureau New Residential Construction.
  13. US homeowners spent $93.5 billion on 8.3 million roofing projects over 2021 to 2023, at a median of $10,000 per project. Source: Census Bureau American Housing Survey 2023 home improvements.
  14. Employment in US roofing contractors was 247,500 in June 2026, with average hourly earnings of $37.94. Source: BLS Current Employment Statistics series CES2023816001 and CES2023816003.
  15. Asia Pacific, not North America, is named the largest region in the roofing underlayment market by The Business Research Company for 2025.

What is actually measurable about roofing underlayment market size

The measurable quantity is physical volume, not dollars. Underlayment is installed across essentially the full deck area of a steep slope roof, so US demand tracks US steep slope roofing volume, which is measured in squares of 100 square feet. Asphalt shingles dominate that volume, and shingle shipments are counted quarterly by the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association.

Two volume series exist and they do not agree. Owens Corning publishes a US asphalt shingle market estimate sourced to ARMA plus its own management estimates. ARMA’s raw shipment counts, released quarterly and reported by trade press, run higher.

Basis 2015 to 2020 avg 2021 2022 2023 2024
US asphalt shingle market, total (MM squares) 136 159 148 157 160
Re-roof and storm (MM squares) 115 131 122 133 135
New construction (MM squares) 21 28 26 24 25

Source: Owens Corning Investor Day Roofing presentation, May 2025, page 34. Footnote: “ARMA, OC Management Estimates.” Geography: United States.

ARMA’s own quarterly shipment counts, as reported by Roofing Contractor, reconstruct to a higher 2024 figure. The gap between the two bases is about 12 million squares, or 7.5 percent (Roofing Brief calculation), and plausibly reflects the difference between manufacturer shipments and installed demand, plus inventory and export movement. Any dollar estimate built on one basis should not be compared to a volume figure built on the other.

Period US shingle shipments (squares) Change
Q1 to Q3 2024 year to date 134,600,000 up 2.6% year over year
Q4 2024 37,400,000 down 16.5% sequentially
Q1 2025 42,300,000 down 1.7% year over year
Q2 2025 44,743,390 first half 2025 total 87,043,351
Q3 2025 40,400,000 down 10% year over year
Full year 2025 not published as a level down 10.3% year over year
Q1 2026 38,100,000 down 9.9% year over year
Q2 2026 44,838,320 up 0.2% year over year
First half 2026 82,968,064 down 4.7% year over year

Sources: Roofing Contractor reporting of ARMA quarterly shipment reports (2024 to 2026); the full year 2025 change is ARMA’s figure as disclosed in Alpha Pro Tech’s FY2025 Form 10-K. Note that the 2024 era articles report Q4 change sequentially while the 2025 and 2026 articles report year over year. The two are not interchangeable.

Underlayment demand is not limited to shingle roofs. Metal, tile, slate and synthetic roofs also require underlayment, and the requirement varies with slope. Our guide to underlayment slope requirements covers where double layer coverage applies. That means the shingle based volume figures above understate total underlayment demand.

Vendor estimates of the roofing underlayment market size, audited

We checked 17 market research firms. Five published a usable, page verified number. Three have a roofing underlayment page with no public figure. Nine, including Grand View Research, Mordor Intelligence, Precedence Research and MarketsandMarkets, have no dedicated roofing underlayment report at all and cover only broader roofing materials markets.

Every one of the five verified figures is global. Treat all of them as vendor estimates with undisclosed methodology. None of the five pages discloses a sample size, a named data source, or a model description.

Vendor Geography Size and base year Forecast Stated CAGR Methodology disclosed
Business Research Insights (roofing underlying materials) Global $19.76bn (2026) $28.35bn (2035) 4.1% (2026 to 2035) None
The Business Research Company Global $29.35bn (2025) $40.12bn (2030) 6.4% (2026 to 2030) Boilerplate only
Future Market Insights (roofing and tile underlayment) Global $31.0bn (2025) $51.5bn (2036) 5.2% (2026 to 2036) None
Future Market Insights (roofing underlay) Global $33.4bn (2025) $56.6bn (2035) 5.4% (2025 to 2035) None
Verified Market Reports Global $33.6bn (2024) $56.6bn (2034) 5.4% (2026 to 2034) Headings only

Three specific problems are visible on the pages themselves.

Two vendors land on an identical endpoint. Future Market Insights forecasts $56.6 billion by 2035 at 5.4 percent. Verified Market Reports forecasts $56.6 billion by 2034 at 5.4 percent. The base years differ by a year and the bases differ by $0.2 billion. Two independent models converging on the same endpoint and the same growth rate off different base years is not what independent modelling looks like.

One vendor contradicts itself. Future Market Insights publishes two live pages covering substantively the same market with different 2025 values: $33.4 billion at 5.4 percent on one, $31.0 billion at 5.2 percent on the other.

One vendor mislabels its own growth rate. The Business Research Company’s summary table lists “CAGR of 6.7% from 2026 to 2030” while the prose says 6.4 percent for that window. The 6.7 percent figure is the single year 2025 to 2026 growth implied by $29.35 billion rising to $31.3 billion, not a five year CAGR (Roofing Brief calculation).

Global Market Insights publishes a roofing and tile underlayment page with no dollar figure at all, only that the market “is anticipated to witness healthy growth during 2025 to 2034.” Cognitive Market Research renders all values as placeholders and states that country level values are locked in preview. Fortune Business Insights’ underlayment page was CAPTCHA walled and could not be verified, and its named players mix flooring underlayment brands with roofing brands, so it should not be cited as a roofing figure without opening it.

Original synthesis: four Roofing Brief calculations

Everything in this section is our own arithmetic on verified public inputs. None of it is a published statistic. Inputs and limitations are stated for each.

Index 1: the US underlayment volume base

Inputs: Owens Corning’s 2024 US asphalt shingle market of 160 million squares; ARMA’s reported 2024 quarterly shipments of 134.6 million squares through Q3 plus 37.4 million in Q4; ARMA’s reported full year 2025 decline of 10.3 percent.

  1. ARMA basis, full year 2024: 134.6 + 37.4 = 172.0 million squares.
  2. ARMA basis, full year 2025: 172.0 x 0.897 = 154.3 million squares.
  3. Owens Corning demand basis, 2025: 160 x 0.897 = 143.5 million squares.
  4. Underlayment requirement: we assume 1.00 to 1.10 squares of underlayment per square of roof. The low end assumes roll coverage stated net of laps; the high end adds a 10 percent lap allowance. Manufacturers state roll coverage on both bases, so this range is a disclosed modelling assumption, not a measured figure.
  5. US field underlayment demand, 2025: 143.5 x 1.00 = 143.5 million squares at the low end, 154.3 x 1.10 = 169.7 million squares at the high end. Range: 144 to 170 million squares, midpoint 157 million squares, equal to 14.4 to 17.0 billion square feet.

Limitations: this base covers asphalt shingle roofs only and therefore understates total underlayment demand by whatever metal, tile and synthetic roofs add. It ignores double layer applications on low slope sections and ice barrier at eaves, which raise the effective ratio. It also treats a shipment change as a demand change.

Index 2: the implied price per square in vendor estimates

Rather than assume a price, we invert the vendors’ own numbers. Applying the only regional share any vendor publishes (North America “almost 25%”, Business Research Insights) to each global figure, then dividing by the volume base from Index 1, gives the price per roofing square each estimate requires in order to be true.

Vendor global estimate Implied North America market at 25% share Implied price per roofing square Implied price per 10 square roll
$19.76bn $4.94bn $29 to $34 $315
$29.35bn $7.34bn $43 to $51 $469
$31.0bn $7.75bn $46 to $54 $495
$33.4bn $8.35bn $49 to $58 $533
$33.6bn $8.40bn $49 to $59 $536

Per roll figures use the 157 million square midpoint. Roofing Brief calculations. Sensitivity: if North America is 15 percent of the global market rather than 25 percent, the $29.35 billion estimate implies $28 per square. At 35 percent it implies $66 per square. The implied price scales linearly with the assumed regional share, so readers who reject the 25 percent input can rescale directly.

We deliberately do not assert a market price per square. No government agency, trade association or public filing publishes an average US price per square for roofing underlayment. That absence is the point: it is the reason vendor dollar figures cannot be audited by anyone outside the vendor. What readers can do is compare the implied prices above against the shelf price of the products they actually buy. Our felt versus synthetic underlayment comparison and our Titanium UDL underlayment review cover what these products are and where they sit in the range.

Index 3: implied market size versus real company revenue

A second way to test the vendor figures without any price assumption is to hold them against audited revenue from the companies that actually sell into this market.

Vendor implied North America underlayment market As a multiple of Owens Corning North America Roofing FY2025 ($4,228M) As a multiple of Beacon residential roofing products FY2024 ($4,833.5M)
$4.94bn 1.17x 1.02x
$7.34bn 1.74x 1.52x
$7.75bn 1.83x 1.60x
$8.35bn 1.97x 1.73x
$8.40bn 1.99x 1.74x

Roofing Brief calculations from the vendor figures and the FY2025 Owens Corning and FY2024 Beacon Forms 10-K. Owens Corning’s Roofing segment describes its primary products as laminate asphalt roofing shingles, with roofing components, composite lumber and oxidized asphalt as other products. Beacon’s residential roofing products line is a distributor’s full residential roofing category, shingles included. On every vendor estimate we verified, the implied North America market for a single component layer exceeds the total North America roofing revenue of the largest US shingle manufacturer.

A third framing uses the housing stock. Dividing the $7.34 billion implied North America market by the 149,454,000 US housing units counted in Q2 2026 gives $49.10 of underlayment per US housing unit per year (Roofing Brief calculation). Over a 20 year roof cycle that is $982 of underlayment per roof, against a median residential roofing project cost of $10,000 in the 2023 American Housing Survey, so underlayment alone would be about 9.8 percent of the entire job including labour and shingles.

Index 4: the felt to synthetic input cost divergence index

There is no producer price index for roofing underlayment. There is one for the asphalt felt side, inside NAICS 324122, and there are several candidate proxies for the synthetic side. We rebase each to 2020 equals 100 and show the ratio.

Period Asphalt felt side (PCU3241223241222) Nonwoven fabric mills (PCU313230313230) Nonpackaging plastics film and sheet (PCU326113326113) Plastics resin (PCU325211325211) Felt to nonwoven ratio Felt to film ratio
2020 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 1.000 1.000
2021 111.5 108.0 118.0 133.4 1.032 0.945
2022 131.2 121.1 136.0 136.7 1.084 0.965
2023 136.2 122.0 126.9 124.4 1.117 1.073
2024 140.5 118.5 125.3 121.2 1.185 1.121
2025 142.4 120.0 126.0 119.5 1.187 1.130
July 2026 149.4 124.1 146.3 131.6 1.204 1.022

Roofing Brief calculation from BLS Producer Price Index industry series, not seasonally adjusted, annual averages except July 2026. The important result is that the two proxies disagree about 2026. Against nonwoven fabrics the divergence widens continuously to 1.204. Against plastics film and sheet it peaks at 1.130 in 2025 and then collapses to 1.022 by July 2026 as film prices jumped.

We report both rather than picking the flattering one. The honest conclusion is bounded, not precise: asphalt felt producer prices rose 49.4 percent between 2020 and July 2026, and synthetic substrate proxies rose between 24.1 percent and 46.3 percent over the same window depending on which proxy you accept. Nothing in federal data measures a synthetic roofing underlayment price directly.

Why federal statistics cannot see synthetic underlayment

Asphalt saturated felt is classified in NAICS 324122, asphalt shingle and coating materials manufacturing, so it appears inside BLS producer price indexes and Census manufacturing statistics for that industry. Synthetic underlayment is a coated polyolefin sheet product and is not classified there. It falls across plastics and textile classifications where no roofing specific breakout exists.

The consequence is direct. The fastest growing half of the underlayment category has no federal price series, no federal shipments series, and no trade association shipment count comparable to ARMA’s shingle data. Vendors filling that gap face no external check on their numbers. That is a structural feature of the data, not an accusation about any particular firm.

The same blind spot applies to product mix. Future Market Insights is the only vendor we found that splits synthetic out, and it publishes two different 2025 shares on two pages: 46.2 percent and 47.3 percent non bitumen synthetic. Global Market Insights describes the split only qualitatively, saying felt holds the major revenue share while synthetics take the highest growth rate. No vendor publishes a standalone synthetic dollar sub market. For adjacent category context see our US synthetic and composite roofing market report.

What public company filings do and do not disclose

No major roofing manufacturer or distributor discloses underlayment revenue. We checked the FY2025 Forms 10-K of Owens Corning, Carlisle Companies and Amrize, plus QXO’s FY2025 and Beacon’s FY2024 filings.

Company Relevant segment FY2025 revenue Prior year Underlayment broken out
Owens Corning Roofing $4,437M $4,630M No. Word appears zero times
Carlisle Companies Carlisle Weatherproofing Technologies $1,298.2M $1,299.3M No. Named as a product, no figure
Amrize Building Envelope $3,301M $3,375M No. No roofing only line either
QXO (Beacon from 29 April 2025) Residential roofing products $3,307.1M (part year) Beacon FY2024: $4,833.5M No
Alpha Pro Tech Building Supply $36.0M $36.0M Yes, as a percentage of segment sales

Alpha Pro Tech is the exception and it is instructive. Its FY2025 10-K states that synthetic roof underlayment was approximately 38 percent of a $36,031,000 Building Supply segment, down from 42 percent of $35,965,000 in FY2024. That implies roughly $13.7 million of synthetic roof underlayment revenue in FY2025 versus $15.1 million in FY2024, a decline of about 9.4 percent (Roofing Brief calculation from disclosed figures). The company names Owens Corning and GAF as its major competitors in synthetic roof underlayment.

The scale is worth stating plainly. The only public issuer that quantifies roofing underlayment at all reports a line roughly 0.31 percent the size of Owens Corning’s Roofing segment. Anyone building a US underlayment market model from public filings has essentially one small data point.

Demand drivers behind US underlayment volume

Underlayment demand is overwhelmingly replacement demand, and replacement demand is driven by the age of the housing stock rather than by new building. Owens Corning reports the median age of the US housing stock reached 41 years in 2024, 36 percent older than the 30 year median in 2000, citing the Census Bureau and the National Association of Home Builders.

  • Housing stock: 149,454,000 total US housing units in Q2 2026, of which 133,811,000 were occupied and 86,985,000 owner occupied. Homeownership rate 65.0 percent. Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey.
  • New construction: 1,488,500 units completed in 2025, including 1,004,800 single family, down from 1,626,900 in 2024. First half 2026 completions were 657,300, down 9.5 percent year over year. Census Bureau New Residential Construction.
  • Homeowner roofing spend: $93.5 billion across 8.3 million roofing projects over 2021 to 2023, median $10,000. This is the largest single improvement category by dollars in the 2023 American Housing Survey. Census Bureau.
  • Labour: 247,500 employees at US roofing contractors in June 2026, average hourly earnings $37.94. BLS Current Employment Statistics.

One reconciliation exercise is worth showing. Dividing the 135 million squares of 2024 re-roof and storm demand by the roughly 4.15 million annual roofing projects implied by the American Housing Survey gives 32.5 squares per project (Roofing Brief calculation). A typical residential roof runs closer to 20 to 30 squares, so the two datasets do not map cleanly onto each other. The likely explanation is that the survey counts only owner occupied home improvement projects, while the shingle figure includes rental property, commercial steep slope work and new construction. Analysts should not treat the two as a single population. For material mix context see our roofing material market share report.

Charts worth building from this data

  1. Vendor estimate spread, global roofing underlayment market. Dot plot of the five verified figures with base years labelled. Shows a 1.70 high to low ratio at a glance. Citation worthy because no other page displays the disagreement.
  2. Implied price per roofing square by vendor estimate. Bar chart of Index 2 with a sensitivity band for the 15 to 35 percent North America share. Lets a reader test each estimate against a price they already know.
  3. ARMA US shingle shipments by quarter, 2024 to 2026. Column chart in squares. The only public time series of the physical volume base.
  4. Felt to synthetic input cost divergence, 2020 equals 100. Line chart with both proxies plotted, showing the 2026 crossover. Demonstrates why a single proxy is not sufficient.
  5. Re-roof versus new construction split of US shingle demand. Stacked columns from the Owens Corning table. Supports the non discretionary demand argument with a named source.

Methodology

Source selection. We prioritised, in order: US federal statistical agencies (BLS, Census Bureau); SEC filings by public issuers; trade association data where a level or a percentage change is publicly stated; investor presentations by named public companies; then market research vendor pages, which are reported as vendor estimates only.

Inclusion rules. A number appears in this report only if we fetched the source ourselves and can quote it. Figures that appeared only in search summaries, in secondary blog coverage, or on paywalled pages were excluded rather than paraphrased.

Handling conflicts. Where sources disagree we show both and state the wedge, as with the 12 million square gap between the ARMA shipments basis and the Owens Corning demand basis for 2024, and the two producer price proxies in Index 4. We did not average conflicting figures into a single number.

Derived figures. Every calculated number is labelled a Roofing Brief calculation with its inputs and arithmetic shown. Derived figures are not published statistics and should be cited as our calculation, not as the underlying agency’s data.

Prices. We attempted to build a verified retail and dealer price series for underlayment rolls. Home Depot, Lowe’s and Menards blocked automated access, and the independent dealer pages we reached did not render prices reliably enough to publish. Rather than publish prices we could not confirm, we removed the price series entirely and rebuilt the analysis as an inversion that requires no price input. This is why Index 2 asks what price each vendor estimate implies instead of asserting a price.

Roof area. We considered building a bottom up estimate from total US residential roof area. The most cited source, NREL technical report NREL/TP-6A20-65298, reports 4,922 million square metres of roof area on small buildings that is suitable for photovoltaic deployment in the continental US. That is the PV suitable subset, roughly 26 percent of small building rooftop area by the report’s own figures, not total roof area, and the report publishes no national small building count. We therefore did not use it as a demand input.

Last updated. 15 August 2026. Data current through July 2026 for BLS producer prices, June 2026 for employment and housing completions, Q2 2026 for housing inventory and ARMA shipments, and FY2025 for company filings.

Source quality ranking

  • Tier 1, primary and official: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index and Current Employment Statistics; US Census Bureau Housing Vacancy Survey, New Residential Construction and American Housing Survey; SEC Forms 10-K filed by Owens Corning, Carlisle Companies, Amrize, QXO, Beacon Roofing Supply and Alpha Pro Tech; NREL technical report NREL/TP-6A20-65298.
  • Tier 2, credible industry and company sources: Owens Corning Investor Day Roofing presentation, May 2025 (a public company presentation using ARMA data plus internal estimates); ARMA quarterly shipment data, which is collected by a trade association and released as levels only through licensed reporting.
  • Tier 3, trade journalism: Roofing Contractor magazine, which is the only public route to ARMA shipment levels in squares. Used for the numbers ARMA supplies it, not for interpretation.
  • Vendor estimates, reported but not relied on: The Business Research Company, Future Market Insights, Verified Market Reports, Business Research Insights, Global Market Insights, Cognitive Market Research. Cited as vendor estimates with undisclosed methodology.
  • Excluded: ARMA’s public sample PDF, which contains placeholder rather than real data; the widely repeated claim that roughly 5 million US residential roofs are replaced annually, for which we found no primary source; Fortune Business Insights’ underlayment page, which we could not open and whose scope between flooring and roofing is unclear; any unsourced roundup page.

Data limitations

  • No US government agency publishes a roofing underlayment market size, shipments series, price series or unit volume series. Every dollar figure in circulation originates with a private vendor.
  • No verified US or North America dollar figure for underlayment exists from any vendor. All five verified figures are global. Anyone quoting a US underlayment market size sourced to these firms is conflating geographies.
  • The 25 percent North America share used in Index 2 and Index 3 is itself a vendor estimate with no disclosed methodology. All implied prices scale linearly with it.
  • We could not verify an average US price per square for underlayment from any authoritative source, which is why we present an inversion rather than a bottom up dollar total.
  • ARMA does not publish shipment levels itself. Levels reach the public only through trade press, and the full dataset is licensed. We could not verify a published ARMA level for full year 2025; our 154.3 million square figure is derived from ARMA’s stated 10.3 percent decline applied to a reconstructed 2024 base.
  • The Owens Corning market table combines ARMA data with the company’s own management estimates and is not an independent measurement.
  • Producer price proxies for synthetic underlayment are proxies. Nonwoven fabric mills and nonpackaging plastics film and sheet both include large volumes of product unrelated to roofing.
  • The Alpha Pro Tech underlayment revenue figure is our calculation from a disclosed segment total and a disclosed percentage mix, not a disclosed revenue line.
  • Vendor figures carry mixed base years (2024, 2025 and 2026). The dispersion statistics in this report do not adjust for that, which if anything understates true disagreement.

Most quotable statistics

  • Verified vendor estimates of the global roofing underlayment market range from $19.76 billion to $33.6 billion, a spread of 70 percent.
  • Zero of five verified vendor estimates publish a US or North America dollar figure.
  • Zero US federal statistical series measure roofing underlayment.
  • US asphalt shingle demand was 160 million squares in 2024, 84 percent of it re-roof and storm work.
  • ARMA reported US shingle shipments down 10.3 percent in 2025 and down 4.7 percent in the first half of 2026.
  • Vendor estimates imply a North America underlayment market 1.17 to 1.99 times the size of Owens Corning’s entire North America Roofing segment.
  • The only US public issuer that quantifies roofing underlayment reports a line about 0.31 percent the size of Owens Corning’s Roofing segment.
  • Asphalt felt producer prices rose 49.4 percent between 2020 and July 2026.

Press summary

The roofing underlayment market is one of the least measured product categories in US construction. No federal agency tracks it, no public company reports revenue for it, and the five market research vendors that publish a figure disagree by 70 percent, from $19.76 billion to $33.6 billion globally, with no methodology disclosed on any of the pages. Two of them forecast an identical $56.6 billion endpoint at an identical 5.4 percent growth rate off different base years. What is measurable is volume: US asphalt shingle demand was 160 million squares in 2024, roughly 84 percent of it replacement work, and ARMA reported shipments fell 10.3 percent in 2025 and 4.7 percent in the first half of 2026. Inverting the vendor figures against that volume base implies underlayment sells for $32 to $54 per roofing square in North America, which would make the underlayment market larger than the entire North America roofing business of Owens Corning, the largest US shingle manufacturer.

Suggested headlines

  1. Five market research firms put the roofing underlayment market between $19.8bn and $33.6bn. None will say how.
  2. Two forecasters predict the same $56.6bn underlayment market. In different years.
  3. The construction product no federal agency measures
  4. What vendor underlayment estimates imply: $469 for a roll of felt paper
  5. US shingle shipments fell 10.3 percent in 2025. Underlayment forecasts still show 5 percent growth.

Recommended fields for a downloadable dataset

  • Period (quarter and year), geography, US shingle shipments in squares, source, percent change basis (year over year or sequential)
  • Vendor name, report title, URL, geography, base year, base value USD, forecast year, forecast value USD, stated CAGR, methodology disclosed yes or no, date last updated
  • BLS series ID, series title, year, annual average index value, 2020 rebased index value
  • Company, CIK, fiscal year, segment name, segment revenue USD, underlayment disclosed yes or no
  • Derived field: implied price per roofing square, with the regional share assumption stored alongside it

Frequently asked questions

What is the roofing underlayment market size in 2026?

No verified US figure exists. Market research vendors put the global market between $19.76 billion and $33.6 billion depending on the firm, all as vendor estimates with undisclosed methodology. None publishes a US or North America dollar figure. The measurable US quantity is volume: about 144 to 170 million squares of underlayment demand in 2025, derived from ARMA shingle shipment data.

Why do roofing underlayment market estimates disagree so much?

Because nothing checks them. There is no federal price series, no federal shipments series and no trade association count for underlayment, so vendors face no external validation. Across five verified estimates the high to low ratio is 1.70 and the coefficient of variation is 19.3 percent. Two vendors publish an identical $56.6 billion endpoint at an identical 5.4 percent growth rate off different base years.

Does any government agency measure roofing underlayment?

No. Asphalt saturated felt is captured indirectly inside NAICS 324122, asphalt shingle and coating materials manufacturing, which has a BLS producer price index. Synthetic underlayment is a coated polyolefin product classified in plastics and textile industries with no roofing breakout. There is no federal series for roofing underlayment specifically, in either price or volume terms.

How big is US roofing underlayment demand in physical terms?

The US asphalt shingle market was 160 million squares in 2024 per Owens Corning, sourced to ARMA and management estimates. Applying ARMA’s reported 10.3 percent decline for 2025 and a 1.00 to 1.10 underlayment to roof ratio gives roughly 144 to 170 million squares of underlayment demand in 2025, or 14.4 to 17.0 billion square feet. This is a Roofing Brief calculation.

Do any public companies report roofing underlayment revenue?

Not among the majors. Owens Corning and Amrize do not use the word underlayment in their FY2025 Forms 10-K. Carlisle names it as a Weatherproofing Technologies product without a figure. The only US issuer that quantifies it is Alpha Pro Tech, which reported synthetic roof underlayment at 38 percent of a $36,031,000 Building Supply segment in FY2025.

What share of underlayment demand is replacement versus new construction?

Replacement dominates. Owens Corning’s 2024 US asphalt shingle market split 135 million squares of re-roof and storm work against 25 million squares of new construction, roughly 84 percent replacement. The company states that more than 80 percent of its roofing demand is non discretionary, driven by re-roof and storm. Underlayment follows the same split because it is installed with the roof covering.

Is synthetic underlayment now bigger than felt?

No verified answer exists. Future Market Insights, the only vendor that splits the category, publishes two different 2025 shares for non bitumen synthetic on two live pages: 46.2 percent and 47.3 percent. Global Market Insights says felt still holds the larger revenue share while synthetics grow faster, but publishes no percentages. No vendor publishes a standalone synthetic dollar figure.

How fast are underlayment input costs rising?

Asphalt felt producer prices rose 49.4 percent between the 2020 annual average and July 2026, per BLS series PCU3241223241222. Synthetic substrate proxies rose between 24.1 percent and 46.3 percent over the same window depending on the proxy, with nonpackaging plastics film and sheet jumping sharply in 2026. No index measures synthetic roofing underlayment directly.

What are current US shingle shipment volumes?

ARMA reported US shingle shipments of 44,838,320 squares in the second quarter of 2026, up 0.2 percent year over year. First half 2026 shipments totalled 82,968,064 squares, down 4.7 percent from 87,043,351 squares in the first half of 2025. Full year 2025 shipments fell 10.3 percent, with a 27.9 percent decline in the fourth quarter.

How should I cite an underlayment market size figure responsibly?

Name the vendor, the base year and the geography, and say it is a vendor estimate. A global figure is not a US figure. If you need a US number, cite physical volume from ARMA shingle shipments instead of dollars, or state the price assumption your dollar figure requires. Never present a vendor estimate as equivalent to government data.

Cite this report

The Roofing Brief. “Roofing Underlayment Market Size and Share Report 2026.” Published 15 August 2026. https://theroofingbrief.com/roofing-underlayment-market-size/

For a specific derived figure, cite it as a Roofing Brief calculation and name the underlying sources. Example: “Roofing Brief calculation from ARMA shingle shipment data reported by Roofing Contractor and vendor market estimates, 2026.”

Sources

The Roofing Brief is an independent roofing industry research publication. This report contains no vendor sponsorship. Derived figures are clearly labelled as Roofing Brief calculations and should not be attributed to the underlying agencies. Market estimates from commercial research firms are reported as vendor claims, not as verified fact.