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9 Tips to Help Choose a Roof Color You’ll Love

9 Tips to Help Choose a Roof Color You’ll Love

The color of the roof can enhance the functionality and aesthetic value of the home’s exterior appeal, when the right shade is applied.

The right roof color can save energy by providing better insulation effects, induces a sense of calmness and a soothing feeling, and may increase the value of the property.

However, an inappropriate roof color might ruin the architectural style of the house yet good colors can make your house attractive.

With little research and planning, surely, you’ll get confident in selecting the best colors that work for your house.

Before you decide on the color, consider availing the good roofing services, to ensure the best quality.

For instance, some contractors offer custom-made metal roof installation services for commercial, residential, repair, and replacement. The company is known for its excellence in work, trustworthiness, experienced team, and good customer services.

In this article, you’ll find better ways to choose the right color for your roof and eventually make an informed decision.

1. Coordinate with Siding and Shutters

Basically, interior designers choose the appropriate colors for cabinets, walls, and flooring visualizing the bigger picture in it. All colors should blend harmoniously together to achieve an overall appeal. 

This principle works the same for the exterior design like choosing the right color for the roof. The color should be different from the siding to provide contrast.

For instance, a dark brown roof can be boring with dark wood siding. Yet, brown shingles may be better with beige or white siding creating a mild contrast in color.

Additionally, the roof color may be adjusted to the tones in window shutters, or accent trim to complement the exterior look of the house. Hence, the paint of the exterior parts of the home should be considered to achieve the balance in color blending.

2. Know When to Use Color Blends

Take note of the blending principle: The simpler the siding is, the more blended color pattern is required to make the home look appealing. For instance, a dark brown siding creates a more attractive look with shingles packed with a charcoal base and flecked with greens.

However, if the home’s siding isn’t plain and varied, then shingles with multiple shades may provide the necessary color-blends.

3. Achieve Visual Balance with Light or Dark Shingles

house-dark-roof

The dark-colored roofs can be more attractive than light colors. This principle may be applied when choosing a color for shingles to provide your home with a sense of balance in its appearance.

Dark-colored roofs tend to minimize a home’s visual mass and may lessen the roof-peak height differences, while lighter roofs may cause homes to look bigger and roof taller.

For example, multi-level homes usually incorporate darker shingles to make the roof appear more substantial to balance the height of the house, while a Ranch home looks better with medium colors.

Also, dark colors can make a single-story house appear “all roof” if it’s a tall and steeply pitched roof. To create a better home’s exterior appeal, here are some home siding colors that’ll suit best with particular roof colors:

  • Brown-Colored Siding: This looks best with grey, brown, green, or blue-colored roofs.  
  • Beige/Cream-Colored Siding: These colors work better with brown, black, blue, grey, and green colored roof.
  • Red-Colored Siding: The color matches with black, green, grey, and dark brown roofs.
  • Light Grey-Colored Siding: It complements with black, green, grey, blue, and white-colored roofs.
  • White-Colored Siding: It’s applicable to almost any color that includes grey, black, brown, green, blue, and white.
  • Log Houses: Brown, black, grey, and green roofs look better with it.

4. Complement the Roof Color with Home’s Architecture and Setting

Some home styles require a particular appearance for the roof. Here are some examples of a home’s style and setting influenced by roof color:

  • Traditional Homes: These are better roofed with black or dark blends to provide a consistent grand appearance. 
  • Southwest or Floridian Flare Homes: It looks amazing with traditional clay tiles colored with rusty reds and oranges especially sided in stucco.
  • A Wood-Sided Home: These homes blend best with deep forest green shingles or brown blend. 
  • White Beach House: If it’s with red trim, it’s best topped with blue roof for an overall nautical theme.

5. Be Consistent with Neighborhood Standards

house-roofs-row

If you’re planning to sell your house, it isn’t good to have the most unique house in the neighborhood. Rather, choose a color that’s close or consistent with the rest of the roofs in your area, especially if homes are close together and near the road. 

If there’s a homeowner’s association in your area, you can check the bylaws about exterior home colors as some areas impose strict color-coding schemes. It’s best to abide by the laws to prevent court issues.

6. Consider Climate Characteristics

The color of the roof can offer the best protection against heat gain and loss for sufficient insulation. This is because light colors reflect heat while dark colors absorb it.

Dark colors are better used within areas that experience cool climates since the absorbed heat may help in the melting of ice and snow.

While light colors may save your energy by controlling the air conditioning bills, especially in warm climates.

Use bolder colors for roofs like dazzling blues or light neutrals where the sun shines bright for a better blend.

7. View Homes Like Yours

It’s great to ensure a roof color that you’ll love just like other smart homeowners. Browsing pictures online or driving through the neighborhoods can help you make an informed decision.

You can view the types of home siding and style of the house with good color roofing. You’ll find a sea of ideas that’ll work for your home and also know about the drawbacks that you should avoid.

8. Try a Manufacture’s Visualizer Tool

Most shingle brands have online tools to allow the potential customers to select a home similar to them from a vast collection of images. You can even try shingles in different colors on the home as this helps and allows you to select your preferred siding type and colors. Here are some of the resources of visualizer tool:

  • IKO Roof-Viewer: It allows you to select an image similar to your house and the app will automatically change every exterior component like roof color and siding.
  • Owens Corning Design EyeQ: The design permits the customer to upload the image of the house and eventually modifies as various roof colors, siding, trims, and railings are pieced together.
  • GAF: GAF provides similar app tools like the ones found with the manufacturers. They have a handy GAF colors app, containing dozens of single samples.

9. Try Before You Buy

You can take sample chips to your home and choose a paint color and look at them against the home exterior’s elements like gutters, siding, shutters, and house trim. At this point, your evaluation will be close to the actual design and set-up.

It’s important to consider looking at existing roofs in your community with the same color blends and shingles for inspiration and confirmation.

different options to choose

Final Thought:

Considering the tips mentioned in this article will help you land on the best roof color that suits your house needs.

So, don’t rush, do your homework and never ignore the color as it immensely improves the appeal of your home. Moreover, it’s a unique representation of yourself with regards to the other properties in your area.

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