What is Cool Roof Paint Coating?

Noticing an increase in your cooling costs? This could be due to your roof. If you reside in a location with lots of hot days and long cooling seasons, the dark-colored shingles on your roof could be adding heat to the interior of your home or building. This heat gain can spike up your cooling costs, especially during the late afternoon and other peak demand times when energy providers are more susceptible to blackouts and other issues.

Introducing Cool Roof Paint Coating
Cool roof paint coating is a coating you (or professionals) apply to your roof to reflect the sun better and keep the inside of your building cooler, thereby reducing your energy bills.

Studies conducted on homes in areas of high heat like Florida, California, and Texas found homeowners can actually reduce their energy use during peak load times by 10 to 30 percent simply by applying cool roof paint coating to their roof surfaces.

How Cool Roof Paint Works
You apply cool roof paint to existing, clean rooftops as a thick paint. Regular roofs that don’t have a cool roof paint coating tend to absorb the sun, particularly when they have a darker color. The UV ray’s heat penetrates through your roof and into your home or building, causing the internal temperature inside to rise.

With cool roof paint, your home or building stays cool inside, keeping you from having to use your air conditioning excessively and this helps in reducing the energy you need to use. . They work by making your roof more reflective. Once your roof is more reflective, the sun’s harmful UV rays simply bounce off it instead of it absorbing them which would heat it up.

You can obtain cool roof coatings in various colors.

Benefits of Cool Roof Paint Coating
You’ll experience several benefits such as:

• Improving the comfort of your indoor spaces that aren’t air-conditioned, like covered patios or garages.
• Reducing your energy bills by reducing your need for air conditioning.
• Reducing the temperature of your roof and potentially extending your roof’s service life.

Aside from the benefits you experience, cool roof paint coating also benefits the environment, particularly when there are many buildings in the community using them. Benefits include:

• Reducing local air temperatures (urban heat island effect).
• Reducing power plant emissions like sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, mercury and nitrous oxides by reducing buildings’ cooling energy use.
• Lowering peak energy demand, helping to prevent power outages.

If your building has a metal roof previously installed in the past several years, there’s a good chance you already have cool roof paint coating on your roof. Most modern metal roofs come with cool roof reflective coating on them already right from the manufacturer.

Keep in mind, if you reside in a cooler climate where your home encounters colder days than warm, it might not make sense to apply a cool roof paint coating. Cool roof paint is best applied to buildings and homes that experience many hot, sunny days due to being in direct sunlight. Either way, it’s always a good idea to consult with a professional roofer first before making any decisions.

Combining cool roof paint coating with other energy-saving solutions, such as a whole house fan, can help reduce your cooling costs significantly.