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HomeReaders ChoiceWhat Is The Best Color For Roof Shingles

What Is The Best Color For Roof Shingles

Complement Your Homes Architecture And Setting

What’s the best color for roofing shingles in Houston?

Some home styles demand a certain look for the roof.

Stately, traditional homes are roofed in black or very dark blends consistent with their grand appearance.

Rusty reds and oranges, the colors of traditional clay tiles, are ideal for homes with a Southwest or Floridian flare, perhaps sided in stucco.

A wood-sided home set among trees blends best with its surroundings when deep forest green shingles or a green/brown blend are used.

A white beach house with red trim topped by a blue roof completes the nautical theme.

Those are just a few examples of how a homes style and setting influences roof color.

Should You Get A Designer Color On Your Roof

Roofing technology continues to improve and innovate. Some of our new favorite colors are available under the designer title and can make your home appear very distinct from others on the block.

One of our favorite colors was rated as the Owens Corning 2022 shingle color of the year: Bourbon. Its an incredible shingle color with blends of red, brown, grey, and blue that would turn heads on any street. Other Owens Corning Designer colors we love are Sand Dune, Aged Copper, and Pacific Wave.

Need Help Choosing A Roof Color For Your Home?

The project managers at Sol Vista Roofing have helped hundreds of homeowners make the right color choice for their home. We can provide samples and help point out resources where different options can be considered. When youre ready to get started, contact our team!

Energy Star Shingles Tax Credit

Because of the huge difference in energy costs, the U.S. government offers a $500 tax credit when you select shingles for your new roof installation that are Energy Star® certified. Energy Star roofing is designed to reflect more of the suns rays, causing a roof temperature to be 50 degrees cooler than comparable roofing.

Meanwhile, that difference in temperature equates to up to 15% less energy use during peak cooling times. In Florida, thats a big difference, since peak cooling times are most of the year.

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Why You Want The Best Roof Shingles

Roof Performance: The best roof shingles perform better. High winds, hailstorms, constant sunthe best roof shingles can handle whatever the environment throws at them.

They will be less likely to develop leaks, leaks that can seriously damage your house and the things in it. They will also be less likely to develop other common roof issues that will cost you money to repair.

Roof Longevity: The best roof shingles last longer, often much longer. They will be less likely to fail prematurely or unexpectedly, meaning that you wont have to deal with the headache of having your roof replaced again for a very long time.

Life-Cycle Cost: The best roof shingles will cost you less in the long run. Whole-life cost is the total cost of ownership over the life of an asset.

Life-cycle cost analysis is an established asset management technique and it typically shows that using high quality roofing materials reduces the total lifetime cost of a roof by reducing required maintenance and repairs as well extending the useful life of the roof.

You typically end up getting more use out of your roof per dollar spent on the initial roof installation than you would for cheaper materials.

Insurance Discounts: The best roofing shingles can save you money on your homeowners insurance. Discounts for a new roof installed with highly-rated performance shingles from a top shingle manufacturer may help you save up to 20% on your homeowners insurance policy premiums.

How To Pick A Colored Roof Shingle

Roof Shingle Colors

When shingling a roof, you must carefully consider the colors that you want to use. The color of your shingles not only has an aesthetic impact, but it also can have a practical impact. For example, the color of your shingles can affect the temperature and energy efficiency of your home.

Also Check: How To Install Metal Roofing Over Asphalt Shingles

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Should You Use Light Or Dark Hues For Your Roof Shingles

The right level of complimentary contrast between your roof and your siding can make your homes curb appeal really pop and stand apart from your neighbors. Light and dark hues can affect this appearance.

In general, dark roof colors are more eye-catching. Dark roof hues have the ability to blend in more complex color dimensions and variations. The roofs that are more dark in color tend to draw more attention to your home and its roof.

Lighter color roofs work great on homes that have a steep pitch. The non-dominant color wont overwhelm the look of your property like dark colors can on steep roofs.

What Is The Most Popular Shingle Color

Of all the roof shingle colors, black is by far one of the most popular.

Dark brown and light brown are also very common choices, while dark gray can be seen on older homes or ones with steeply pitched roofs in cold weather climates where ice accumulation would otherwise be a risk for these types of building materials.

A contractor will help you determine which color best suits your needs, whether its something as simple-sounding as What shade do I want?

Then theyll provide samples to check how different tones appear under differing lighting conditions before recommending an individual hue!

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Are Metal Roofs Energy Efficient

Metal roofs are the exception to the rule. The highly reflective surface allows it to reflect solar radiation away from your home. Experts estimate that metallic shingles or panels can reduce cooling costs between 10% and 25%.Metal roofs excel in three key areas: emissivity, reflectivity, and thermal resistance. Emissivity measures a roofs ability to radiate sunlight away from your home. Some manufacturers offer stone-coated metal roofs that re-emit up to 90% of solar radiation.Reflectivity gauges how much sunshine the roof absorbs. Low solar reflectivity can heat your roof’s surface to 160 degrees. Metal mitigates heat absorption because it naturally dissipates heat.Thermal resistance determines how well roofing material can resist heat flow. A study from R& D Engineering found that some metal can improve your roofs thermal performance by 218%. Note that researchers used conventional asphalt shingles as a baseline for the trial.

The Best Roof Shingle Colors For Your Home

What is the Best Roofing Color, Pairings & Most Popular

For the sake of consistency, we will use the common asphalt shingle as the roofing shingle material. To bring a more dynamic look to your home, using a darker colored shingle can make a huge difference and bring beautiful contrast. Some colors that are not simple gray include light greens and blues and neutrals like beige or off-white. Also, shingles with alternating and blended colors are huge as they give more dimension and texture to your roof.

The top trending roof shingle colors for 2021 include:

  • Light and soft greens
  • Light and pale blues
  • Beige and off-white
  • Taupe and light brown hues

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Whats More Important Than The Color Of My Shingles

Like we mentioned above, the quality of your shingles is more important than the color of your shingles. If youre shopping for a new roof, make sure you choose a roof installation provider who is licensed by a leading roofing manufacturer. For example, here at Werner Roofing, were proud to hold the Master Elite certification from GAF shingles. That puts us among the top 3% of roofing contractors in the nation who can install the highest quality GAF asphalt shingles on the market.

Another important component of your roof that will have a greater impact on your homes efficiency than the color of your shingles themselves is the insulation and ventilation in your attic. If your home is well-insulated, your roof was built properly, and you have the ventilation you need in your attic to regulate your roofs temperature, you shouldnt have problems with your roof being too hot or too cold. This offers yet another reason to make sure youre choosing a roofing professional you trust. Quality work means more energy efficiency and more savings for you down the road.

What About The Fun Shingle Colors For Roofing

If you are interested in a red, green, or blue for your new roof, here are a few siding colors that pair best with those roofs.

Red roofs look best with Cream or white, storm blue, storm gray, muted green
Green roofs look best with Cedar, beige, white, log cabin
Blue roofs look best with White, beige, blue, storm blue, storm gray, light gray, log cabin

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Resale Value Of Various Types Of Roofing Materials

Know that your roof accounts for up to forty percent of the buildings visual appearance and curb appeal and take that into consideration.

This goes doubly so if you plan on selling in the near future or if you are planning on flipping the property, since you need to make sure you choose something that will add to the resale value of the home and is perhaps relatively neutral in order to make sure that potential buyers will be able to see how they can put their own stamp on the house.

Higher end or more expensive roofing materials may also help to increase the resale value of your home for instance, metal roofing or cedar shake shingles tend to add more value than an asphalt roof.

The color combination of your homes siding or brick or other materials with your roof may help improve the value as well a harmonious color combination will obviously be more appealing.

If you plan to sell in the near future, you may want to discuss what is most popular with your contractor and take a look at comparable properties in your area to see what the competition is doing in terms of house and roof color combinations.

Design Concepts To Pick The Perfect Roof Shingle Color

Roof Shingle Colors

Ive always found color theory to be a bit too complicated for me. Why would I want to use a Triadic color scheme with blue, pink, and orange? Its never quite clicked in my brain.

Even so, there are still multiple *simple* color and design concepts that are useful as you choose the color and material for your roofing project.

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For Brown Earthy Colored Houses

Color combination ideas adapted from Chrissy Marie.

Browns and sometimes blacks will look best. Avoid gray shingles. Be sure to pick a shingle with good contrast to the rest of the home. If you want a bolder look, green or red could also pair well depending on your siding color. In the photo above, the homeowners opted for less contrast and chose to match the roof color to the accent color of the stonework. Because the house has dark black shutters, there is still color contrast on the home.

Examples in the CertainTeed Landmark line include Weathered Wood, Burnt Sienna, Moire Black, and Charcoal Black.

Default To Dark Neutral If Unsure

If you get stuck in your deliberations, then dark neutrals browns and grays mostly work on a broad range of home styles and colors.

These Owens Corning Oakridge shingles are a good example of a dark neutral palette except perhaps for Chateau Green and the few light grays.

If you are still stymied, then consider going with the charcoal gray color. It works with everything.

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Roofing Color Effect On Cooling Costs

As explained in Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction, chapter on BEST ROOFING PRACTICES:

Tests at FSEC also indicate that simplyswitching from dark to white asphalt shingles in a coolingclimate can reduce peak cooling loads by 17% and seasonalloads by 4%.

The greatest savings resulted fromusing white metal roofing

— Adapted with permission from Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction.

How To Pick The Right Roof Shingle Color For Your Home

How to Choose Roof Shingles – Tips on Picking the Right Color & Style

Getting ready to reroof your home? When its time to replace your roof, you may also want to consider changing up your roof color.

Are there better color options than what you have on your roof right now that would enhance the overall exterior look of your home and potentially boost curb appeal? Its easy to just pick the same roof color that you already have or that your roofing contractor suggests. However, a new roof is a big investment, and you might as well pick the roof color you really want so that your home feels like your home.

Alreadylove your roof color? Great! Ask your contractor if the same, or a similar,shingle color is available with enhanced performance features if youre lookingto upgrade your roofs durability.

Choosing theright color for your home begins with having the confidence to say you wantsomething different.

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Does The Color Of My Roof Matter

When youre building a home, renovating a home youve recently purchased, or just upgrading your older home, your roof is an important investment. If youre planning to put on a new roof, you already know that there are a lot of considerations to make, from which shingles youll choose to finding the right contractor to deciding when is the best time to have the project completed. But is the color of your roof really something you need to think about, too? Heres what you need to know about the importance of your roofs color:

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Try A Shingle Manufacturers Visualizer Tool

Many shingle brands have online tools and apps that allow you to choose a home similar to yours from a large collection of images.

You can then try different shingles and colors on the home. Many allow you to select a siding type and color too. Here are the four resources we like.

Owens Corning Design EyeQ: Select roof, siding, accessories such as trim and railings to see how colors work together.

The Color Palettes section pulls colors together chosen by designers to blend beautifully.

The Design EyeQ also allows you to upload a picture of your own home, so you can change its looks.

IKO Roofviewer: Select an image of a home like yours or start by picking a home type Colonial, Ranch, Tudor, Two-story and others.

Once youve chosen a home, the tool allows you to change every exterior component including roof, siding and shutters. The Roofviewer is also available as an app.

CertainTeed ColorView and others:

CertainTeed has prepared a suite of design tools including ColorView, which is most like the tools listed above.

ColorCoach is a virtual swatch book designed to give you more confidence in your color choices. TrimIt is all about trim. CurbAppeal is a visualizer app to take with you.

Menards Design-It Roofing and Siding visualizer: Upload a picture of your home or choose from the gallery. Then change its appearance to coordinate roofing with siding and other exterior components.

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Do You Want Warm Or Cool Colors

Dont automatically assume that a dark roof and light siding are going to go together. Helping you avoid mismatched colors is one of the primary reasons we put this guide together. For example, if you have a beige house and slap a bluish-gray roof on it, you might clash because your house is warm and your roof is cool . Generally, warmer colors and cooler colors are going to work best together.

Take your landscaping into consideration as well. For example, cooler colors could accent nicely if you always plant bright colored flowers and have hanging plants. While landscaping made up of more naturally occurring plant life like pine trees and bushes, warmer colors will look incredibly nice in juxtaposition.

House And Roof Color Combinations: How To Coordinate Not Match Your Roof Shingles Colors To Your House

Choosing the Right Color Shingles for Your Home

It is as simple as combining a warm shingle color with a warm siding color, or a cool shingle color with a cool siding color. Your color palette for your roof and siding should fall under the same tone , and a similar but never the same color.

Here are some popular house and roof color combinations. My roofing contractor told us the most popular colors of roof shingles are all made up of variations of:

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When Dark Roofs Make Sense

A dark roof isnt always a negative thing. For homes in colder climates that dont experience the extremes of a hot summer or year-round heat, a dark roof makes sense. A black roof with asphalt shingles will absorb the heat of the sun, so if youre in an area that is cold most of the year, a dark roof is something youll need to help heat your home and decrease energy usage by giving your furnace a break.

What Color House Goes With Green Shingles

House Siding Color:
Brown, black, dark green, dark blue
Brown

Best Exterior Paint Colors for a Green Roof

  • White- Crisp and clean and somewhat preppy, white houses paired with a metal green roof work in most neighborhoods.
  • Stone- For the little cottages and cabins nestled in the woods or the mountains, a metal green roof feels right at home.

Additionally, what is the best color for roof shingles? For example, a dark gray or black roof will look good with a gray or blue house, while a brown, cream or tan colored house will match better with brown shingles or a mix of cream and brown.

People also ask, how do you match a shingle color?

According to industry research, one of the greatest challenges many homeowners face is how to match shingle colors that complement their home. 17 Facts and Tips on How to Pick Shingle Colors to Complement Your Home.

HOUSE COLOR
Brown, Black, Grey, Green, Blue

What color shingles last the longest?

Light shingle colors have been shown to lower attic temperatures, but whether this means light shingles will last longer than dark shingles is more problematic.

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