If you want eye-catching curb appeal that adds value to your home, choosing the right roof shingle color is of primary importance.
While classic roof shingle colors can always work, if you fine-tune your search you’ll get optimal results that will maximize your home’s beauty and your return on investment when it comes time to sell your home.
How to Pick the Right Roof Color
1. Your home’s style
Whether your home is Traditional, Craftsman, Colonial, Contemporary, or Cape Cod — its architectural style is a major contributor to your roof shingle color choice. Contemporary homes with vast windows and clean designs look stunning with crisp color contrasts. Darker tones complement them perfectly. Classic Colonial-style homes with their light siding and dark shutters look ideal with classic shingle colors like black or brown. Cape Cod-style homes typically have light siding, and their roof shingles should coordinate. Lighter colors in cool tones like gray work perfectly.
2. Your siding and trim color scheme
Your home’s siding and trim combined with shutter color, door color, and prominent window color all factor into your roof shingle color choice.
Think of your home as a canvas. The colors that already exist are “on the canvas” so ensure the color you add with your new asphalt roofing shingles appropriately complements the colors already on the canvas.
Imagine how dismal it would look if you combined your dark siding with a dark roof. Avoid the misfit appearance of an uncoordinated home. Get a cohesive aesthetic by ensuring your siding pairs well with your roof. If you have dark siding and you want to lighten up the overall aesthetic of your home, pick a lighter roof shingle color—like gray.
3. Your home’s natural environment
Keep your home from looking out of sorts by taking inventory of the natural surroundings it’s placed in.
Do you live on a greenbelt? Is there a pond in your yard? Does your property have a number of large evergreens or towering oak trees bordering it? If you live near a lake, go with a light color roof shingle so your home fits seamlessly into its surroundings. If your home is surrounded by trees, brown or black roofing shingles will make it pop without taking away from the beautiful greens that frame your home.
Other Considerations for Your Roof Color
There are roof colors that conceal the appearance of algae stains
Dark roof shingles don’t show algae or stains as much as others. In the past, light-colored shingles weren’t popular due to the unsightly dark algae that would grow on them. The good news? Algae-resistant granules are now available and help prevent the growth of blue-green algae. They reduce the harmless yet unattractive black streaks the algae can create on asphalt shingles.
Which color to pick first: new siding or new roofing?
Pick your siding color first. Plan your roof color around the color you choose for your siding.
Try on your roof shingle color
Once you pick your favorite color or two, ask your roofing contractor for samples of the colors and hold them up to your home siding during different times of the day to see how they look with more or less sunshine on them.
Which roof shingle colors work well with particular siding colors?
Colors that go well together include:
Siding color: White
- Best roof shingle color: Black, brown, gray, or blue
Siding color: Brown
- Best roof shingle color: Green, dark brown, dark blue, or maroon
Siding color: Blue
- Best roof shingle color: Black, gray, dark brown, or white
Siding color: Green
- Best roof shingle color: Light brown or gray
Siding color: Gray
- Best roof shingle color: Black, blue, or brown
Siding color: Tan
- Best roof shingle color: Light brown, blue or yellow
If the above colors don’t suit your taste, go with a classic color choice for roof shingles such as black, gray, dark gray, light brown, and dark brown.
Get Lasting Protection for Your Home with a New Roof
You can have a gorgeous new roof installed by us at Craftsman Exterior Remodeling, giving you peace of mind that your Indianapolis home is well protected. As an Owens Corning Preferred Contractor, we do precise installations and stand behind our work with a lifetime warranty on our workmanship.
Learn more about our roofing services and contact us for a free assessment.
