Choosing the Best Roof Color for Your Home

Roof coloration is often overlooked as an element of the outdoor color palette but it can be a very important player in the overall flow and continuity of the design.  With house paint, trim and landscaping on the brain, many homeowners just don’t realize what an impact shingle shade will have on the rest of the motif once your outdoor space is completed.  So, before falling in love with a shade of paint that clashes horribly with your roof, find out what you can do to maintain a continuation of complimentary hues from top to bottom.

If you’re starting from scratch, a good place to begin is with universally acceptable color schemes.  Color swatches can be found at any paint supply or hardware store and these can be used to visualize which paint and shingle colors can live next to each other harmoniously.  These expertly coordinated color swatches are the next best thing to having an interior (or exterior) designer and pretty much take all the guess work out of matching – an excellent option for the color blind homeowner.

  For example, a house with a green tinted roof would coordinate well with gray, green or white paint colors – and maybe a pop of burgundy for interest similar to the home pictured below.  It has a green roof and so the siding was painted in a grayish-green with primarily white trim.

It’s also important to ask yourself if your home is warm or cool in terms of coloring.  Answering this simple question will help protect you against any major eye-sore of totally mismatched hues.  The house above is composed of all cool colors – the grayish-green, the bluish-red (as oppose to an orangey-red you’d see in a sunset).  If your home is gray, green or blue, you’ll want to use shingles that also sport cooler tones.  If your home is red, orange or beige, then brown or tan shingles may be the best selection.

If you’re still looking for further options, your neighboring homes are an abundant and accessible resource to test-drive color combinations.  Whether you love it or hate it, checking out nearby houses can be an excellent way to gauge your taste, stimulate ideas and if nothing else, give you some clue of what you don’t like.  Besides that, it’s also important to maintain continuity within your neighborhood - avoid clashing against your neighbors if at all possible.  A disconnect between neighboring houses can decrease your curb appeal even if your house looks better.