Tips for Choosing the Best Roof Color for Your Home

A roof can really express a homeowner’s personality. Depending on the style of your home and the color of the roofing shingles you choose, you can create a warm, welcoming vibe or a bold, dramatic statement. When it’s time to think outside the home, it’s time to include that new roof in your plans. But no matter what your exterior plans are, you’ll be seeing a lot more of your roof when you spend that much time outside.

The asphalt shingles you choose for your roof should be beautiful to behold and make a personal statement about those who live under its protection. The right color and style of roofing shingles will also make a great first impression from the front of your home, enhancing its curb appeal and potentially boosting its resale value. How to choose shingle colors that complement your home? It’s helpful to start by thinking big. Then narrow down your choices. Here’s how:

Construction Choices Can Inform Shingle Color

Your roof can account for up to 40% of your home’s visual exterior, so it deserves as much consideration as you’d devote to its interior design. The higher the pitch or the greater the slope of your roof, the more you’ll see the shingles from street level. When selecting your asphalt roofing shingles, choose a color and profile that will enhance your home’s architectural style and draw the eye upward toward any special details, like dormers and gables.

Construction and building materials can also vary by geographic location. Brick homes are more prevalent in northern areas; in southern areas, frame or stucco homes tend to be more common. Other facings often used in both areas include masonry, stone veneer, wood logs, and wood or vinyl siding.

Consider these examples to get an understanding of how construction and color can work together: Red brick houses work well with shingles that are dark brown, black, grey, or green in color. Grey houses work with grey, black, green, blue, or white, while beige or cream-colored houses prefer brown, black, grey, green, or blue shingles.

Ideally, these are all in solid colors, though an exciting color blend can be used so long as it doesn’t clash with the other exterior elements. Always mix patterns with care, especially if the color of the facing and the roofing shingles being considered already contrast with each other. A good rule of thumb is to mix patterns on your home the way you’d mix them in your home; such as to combine a large print with a smaller print in a complementary color.

Consider Climate And Geography

Recently, light-colored asphalt shingles have become more prevalent in humid southern climates. The addition of special algae-resistant granules that help inhibit the growth of blue-green algae helps reduce the appearance of harmless but unsightly black streaks and has allowed for lighter-colored roofing shingles to help keep the home’s interior cooler, depending on how effective the insulation and ventilation are.

If your home is in the Pacific Northwest, you may wish to choose roofing shingles in shades or combos of grey, brown, or green to harmonize with the natural environment of the sea and evergreens.

In the north, natural sunlight has a cool, bluish cast to it; the farther south you go, the warmer and reddish the character of the light becomes. The same color blend of cool greys and icy blues that looks so fantastic on a home in New England might look washed out in the orange sunset glow of the sandy southwest or the tropical light of Florida.

When choosing a shingle color to match your home, always look at actual samples in different light conditions and remember that natural light varies considerably by location, not just time of day.

Consider Your Home’s Architectural Style

Always select a shingle color that complements yet contrasts with your home’s exterior elements, no matter what style of home you have. If everything matches, the overall look will be bland and boring. Historical home types look best in traditional colors. Choose dark grey or black, either in solid colors or varying shades to mimic the look of natural slate tiles or brown, to evoke the look of genuine wood shake construction. Dark green or blue might work well too, depending on the color of your current siding and facing.

Rustic homes, waterfront, or rural properties have a more casual, less formal, look. Weathered browns and greys, muted greens will complement the natural surroundings and the home’s relaxed vibe. Check out shingles whose profile looks like genuine wood shakes or even slate tiles. Suggested shingle colors for weathered wood or log houses: brown, green, black, and grey.

Rural homes, whether of log, wood or stone construction, can look warm, casual, and inviting yet very dramatic, as the choice of grey roofing shingles emulating slate tiles shows here.

Similarly, if your facing is a stone veneer of very large, randomly sized and multicolored fieldstones, roofing shingles with a prominent texture or multiple colors are likely to compete or clash.

Try Before You Buy And Other Final Tips

You’d never choose a paint color without taking sample chips home and looking at them against the walls to be painted in various lighting conditions, so always look at actual shingle samples at different times of day against all of your home’s exterior elements to make sure that what you see is what you’ll get. Remember to look at existing roofs in your community that have the same shingles and color blends for inspiration – and confirmation – too.

Do you want to hide or enhance? Enlarge or reduce? A roof of light-colored asphalt shingles can make your home appear larger and draw attention to any positive features, while darker colors can hide imperfections and create focus.

People often ask what color of shingle goes with such and such a color of their house. We hope this information will help answer some of your questions! If you’re still struggling with choosing a shingle color, contact Bergens Roofing in Slidell. We’ll be more than happy to help find the shingles best for you.