A dormer is a small structure that projects out from a sloped roof, with its own roof and usually a window, built to add headroom, light, or space to the floor below. Dormers create extra roof-to-wall seams where they meet the main roof, and those seams need careful flashing to stay watertight. Because a dormer interrupts an otherwise continuous slope, it is one of the more common places an older or poorly flashed roof develops a leak.
A dormer is essentially a small structure that pokes up out of a sloped roof, complete with its own short roof, side walls, and often a window facing out. It is added to bring light and usable headroom to the space directly beneath a steep roofline, most often in an upstairs bedroom or attic conversion.
Structurally, a dormer sits on top of the main roof framing and breaks up what would otherwise be one continuous slope. Wherever the dormer's own roof and walls meet the main roof, that junction has to be sealed.
Those junctions are handled with flashing, most often step flashing along the dormer's side walls and valley or cricket flashing where the dormer's small roof ties into the main slope.
Every one of those seams is hand-formed and hand-fitted, unlike the open field of a roof where shingles simply overlap in a repeating pattern. That makes a dormer inherently more labor-intensive to build and to re-roof correctly.
It also makes a dormer a common source of leaks on an older roof. If the original flashing was rushed or has simply aged out, water tends to find the seam where the dormer meets the roof before it finds a weakness anywhere else.
For a homeowner, a ceiling stain near an upstairs window is the clearest sign to check a dormer during any roof inspection. The shingles nearby often look fine while the real problem sits in the flashing tucked against the dormer wall.
A targeted flashing repair is usually all a dormer leak needs. The dormer itself rarely has to come off.
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