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Choosing the right shingles for your roof is so important because your roof is such an important aspect of your home’s appearance. Your roof's color and shingle style affect your property’s curb appeal very much. When considering a new roof for your home, it’s important to carefully consider the colors that you want to use. The color of your asphalt roof shingles would not only impact its beauty and aesthetics, but it can actually have an impact on the temperature and energy efficiency of your home! Based on the color you choose for your roof, the amount of light reflectivity will vary depending on how light or dark the color you’ve chosen is.
Why Are Your Shingles So Important?
Not only does your roof keep you dry and safe inside, the roof is one of the very first things you notice about a property. If the roof doesn’t look good the whole house will have far less appeal. If you were to consider the resale value of your home dependent on the color of your roof then picking the roof’s color becomes very important. Therefore, picking a bold, bright roof color might be the way to go to make your home stand out, get that curb appeal and boost the property value. However, this could also work the other way. Beauty is subjective and a potential buyer may not love the bright, eye-catching color that you love so much. Obviously, they are crazy! However, depending on how quickly you are looking to sell your home, you might just want to go with a neutral roofing color scheme in order to be safe and protect your home’s resale value.
You should always coordinate the color of your roofing shingles with the colors of other elements of your home such as the siding, whether it be made of bricks, wood, vinyl, stones or stucco. Paint and shutter colors can always be changed, however bricks, natural wood, and stonework are much more permanent. Let’s say your home has both brick and vinyl siding. We recommend starting with comparing sample shingle colors to the brick, then move to the vinyl siding colors. This way you know that your shingle roof will look great with the brickwork on your property, and worst comes to worst, the color of the vinyl siding can be changed if necessary.
Your local roofing company can also give you great advice when it comes to choosing the right roof shingles for your property. We have seen it all, we have experience putting on every shingle color and shingle type there is. We know what works best and what will just plain look awful. The customer is always right so we would never impose our own subjective opinions on you, but if you get stuck and you’re just not sure, it really doesn’t hurt to ask us and get an experienced roofer’s perspective. We are more than happy to offer our expertise and would never be hurt if ultimately you went with something else.
What Are The Different Roof Shingle Types?
There are so many different roof shingle types, far more than we could get into here. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Asphalt is the most commonly used shingle type across North America. Asphalt roof shingles are so popular because they are very economical, durable and easy to install. Other shingle types include: wood shingle, slate shingles, clay/ceramic shingles and plastic shingles that can be designed to imitate the appearance of other shingle types. Here we will mostly discuss asphalt shingles but if you want to request a special type of shingles for your roofing project, just let us know!
Matching Your Shingle Roof To Your Home
When picking a shingle color for your home, some homeowners might try to match the color of the shingles to the exact color of the outside of their home. Now, we may question whether that is a good idea or not. You will likely get better results with more of a contrasting color that will compliment the other colors on your house rather than a color that will blend in too much and make your house seem like one uniform block of color. For example, having red brick siding on your home, you would really not want to install red brick-toned shingles alongside it. It would simply be a big red brick-house. This may be eye-catching, but not necessarily appealing. The shingle color and the siding color play a very important role in the exterior appearance of your home. Naturally, you would need to choose colors that make your home look flattering, fit your own design preference and not be an eyesore.
Guide To Roofing Shingle Colors
First, being aware of your climate and understanding the way that it can affect your home is crucial. Living in a region where the sun is almost always out, shining light all day, could mean having a darker roof, which does not reflect light and stores that energy as heat, could mean that the inside becomes very hot and uncomfortable. The architectural style of your home and its surrounding environment are crucial as well to consider when selecting the best shingle color for your roof. We know that lighter shingle colors are able to reflect the sunlight while darker colors absorb it. This is a very important consideration when choosing the type of shingles you want on your home.
When living in a colder climate, a darker shingle color will help keep some warmth inside your home and assist with melting snow and ice off of your roof in the winter. Shingle colors can help in different ways, however, the color of your roof shingles should not be the main determining factor in your decision. You should note that the roof will absorb heat despite what color asphalt shingles you choose and transfer that heat down to your home. The main difference in the color you choose will be that darker shingle colors will absorb the heat more earlier in the day as well as later in the afternoon than lighter roof shingles will.
Dark Shingle Roofs
Dark roof shingle colors often come in some kind of traditional gray. Darker shingles are easy to manufacture and highly affordable and are very effective in protecting your roof with the classic asphalt coating. Usually dark shingles tend to look best when paired with lighter house colors and bolder shingle color choices where the shingles are allowed to sink into the background and let other elements of the house come forward and show off. However, one downside with dark shingles is that when hotter days come around, dark shingle's rooftops do have an issue. Indirect sunlight can tend to absorb heat from the sun rays more, just as if you were to be wearing a black shirt in the summer you will start to get a lot hotter than if you were a lighter shirt. The heat travels through the roof and into your home or attic. In the attic, unwanted condensation issues start to be created. In the home itself, that extra heat can make it difficult to cool down, therefore, leading to higher energy bills over time due to the high use of your air conditioner. That internal energy does not benefit the roof shingles and causes them to wear out more quickly or suffer damage more easily in the fall and winter.
Light Shingle Roofs
Light roof shingle colors, on the other hand, are made of very light grays and whitened panels. Customarily beyond shingle color, they are quite similar to darker materials. However, they may have a higher price tag because they remain more of a niche market choice which means that the light shingles are a subset of the shingle market. It is a highly specialized market segment in the shingle collections. Light shingles go well with darker siding colors, which would provide a nice complement to the bright shingles.
The benefit of using light shingles is energy efficiency. Since lighter materials reflect sunlight and don’t absorb sunlight as easily as dark shingles do there you will find your air conditioning system gets more of a rest and your energy bills will be lower. This also helps the shingles last longer and helps keep houses cooler during hot summer weather. Thus, homeowners with light shingles can save money on their energy bills over time. Because of this, there is sometimes a rebate program available at a state or local level for using compatible light shingles.
Energy Star Rated
Energy Star is a way to help you make a more informed decision when choosing the right roof shingles for your home. Energy Star rates many materials used in construction, including roofing materials. This rating helps you gauge how much more energy efficient one set of asphalt shingles is compared to another. This rating came about because people became aware that many buildings were getting hotter and using so much energy to cool. Saving energy means saving money and will also have a positive impact on the environment. Therefore, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created the Energy Star program in order to rate each material for energy efficiency such as shingle materials. One of the most popular shingle brands is GAF Timberline and the majority of its products are energy star rated.
Usually, asphalt shingles have been one of the hottest roofing materials available. However, manufacturers have found ways to make them more reflective and being able to reduce the amount of heat it absorbs. Efficient energy is called energy efficiency is a way to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. When insulating a home, it also provides a measure for how effective the insulation is, and how much less heating and cooling energy will be required to achieve a balanced temperature. If you’re not sure of a product’s energy rating, just ask your local roofing company, Infinite Roofing, and you can be assured that we will do our best to answer or find out that information for you.
Infinite Roofing & Construction
25 Walker Way, Ste 2A
Colonie, NY 12205
(office) 518-444-ROOF
(mobile) 518-221-1003
(email) info@infiniteroofingny.com
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