Between our dark roofs and rising heat, cities ("urban heat islands") are relying on more and more energy to keep cool. Rolling black-outs or brown-outs have become more prevalent in the last couple of years, and we know white roofs can help reflect some of the light and heat. Can't paint your own shingles, but still want to help? Find out how.
Enter the White Roof Project, which offers up this stunning infographic and, best of all, a way to help. Through the White Roof Project, you can help identify dark roofs, adopt a roof (meaning, donate money that goes to painting one dark roof white), and even volunteer to help paint an actual roof in New York City. And while that seems pretty local, it also seems like a reasonable goal—one that can then be implemented in other cities.
Read more: White Roof Project
Related posts:
• Cool Roof Shingles by GAF
• Reduce Your AC Bill By 20%: Get a White Roof
• 4 Eco-Friendly Roof Options
(Image: J.K. Behan Roofing, via this post.)
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My husband painted our shingled roof with nontoxic whitewash made from limestone that was leftover from the greenhouse where he works. It looks great and we noticed a cooling effect right away. The whitewash will wash away by wintertime when we want the roof to be darker. He plans to white wash it again next spring.
Samanta can you tell us more how you did it, how much it cost, difficulty. Thanks.
Fantastic blog post. We are building a house (energy efficient) and are choosing roof colors and really want a white roof. These numbers are the hard sell - LOVE IT.
Thanks for the info - white roofs are a real change we can quantify.
I would never have thought of painting a roof as the seasons change! We spend more on heating than cooling, so the black roof makes more sense for us overall, but there's some appeal to the annual whitewash idea.
when we add onto our house (in FL) we will probably go with a white aluminum roof. good for hurricanes, good for energy efficiency. works for me.