Cedar roofs look absolutely beautiful. Sure, we’re a little biased, but you have to admit that there are few sights as nice as a great paint job topped off by the industry’s best shakes and shingles.
Many of our customers want a new cedar roof that matches their home and their personal style. Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your color choice.
Staining or Painting Your Cedar Roof
If you choose to use paint or a stain for your roof, remember your protective coating should be added before installation. The addition of cedar roofing coloration during the manufacturing process ensures all sides of each shingle are coated with your stain or paint, keeping your entire roof safe from the weather. Stained or painted cedar should be maintained regularly with frequent cleaning and stain reapplication.
Natural Finishes
If you want to preserve the native color of your cedar roofing, transparent natural wood finishes are designed to preserve your roof’s color. Transparent stains also prevent normal aging while keeping the original color of your cedar roof installation.
Opaque Coatings
Solid color stains and paints will cover your cedar roofing in your preferred shade while still giving you the wood grain look of natural cedar. Opaque coatings give you the most choices with a wide range of colors that perfectly complement your home’s existing exterior design. Opaque paints and stains can be water, latex, or acrylic-based, allowing you to find the perfect option.
Cedar Wood Oils
Wood oils are created using bleach, water-repellent and essential oils. This option is used to accelerate the aging process for those who prefer a gray tone for their cedar roofing installation. When the oil is initially applied, the cedar will turn a light gray tone which gradually darkens over time. Although this gives cedar roofing a naturally aged look, the nutritional oils protect each shingle from rain and sun damage, keeping your roof safe under any weather condition.
Choosing a color for your new roof can be difficult. With natural and opaque options, you can be sure you will get the perfect look for your cedar roofing. Natural finishes, opaque coatings, and cedar wood oils are a great way to protect your investment from wear and tear while keeping it beautiful.
Tips for Choosing Your Cedar Roof Color
Should You Try Light or Dark?
Studies vary with their opinions based on whether or not darker roofs or lighter roofs are better for heating and cooling your home. Some try to extend this to cedar roofs as well, but the stains available don’t ultimately make a significant difference for most of our customers.
When considering what the shade of your roof should be, look to other elements of your home like your bricks or the overall busyness of your home for inspiration. No matter if you do choose light or dark, insulation and proper installation make the biggest difference for your heating and cooling bills, and we can recommend a great company for that.
Match Your Bricks
If you have a brick home, it creates an ideal starting palette for you to consider when picking a roof color. Most people spend a lot of time determining their exterior wall coloring, and you likely have a shade you love. Match it and you’ll create a pleasing aesthetic that’ll last for years to come.
Keep Things Calm With Simple Colors
When matching your home’s existing exterior, always consider how busy things look. Multi-color facades or homes with multiple paint colors across siding and trim may get too jumbled if your cedar roof doesn’t set a neutral in-between shade.
Too many patterns or non-complementary colors can also overwhelm the viewer and make your home feel disjointed.
Thankfully, most cedar shades and stains can serve as a great neutral point that accents today’s most popular and most established home paint choices.
Check the Lighting
You always want to look at your potential cedar shakes in multiple lighting scenarios to get a good feel for how your home will look over the course of its life. Natural wood finishes bring out the cedar’s true color and give you brighter looks that can work especially well in shade.
Plan to Go Grey
Cedar shingles and shakes take on a grey hue over time due to natural weathering. When homeowners desire this natural graying and silver look, we use the clear coat, which allows for that silvering to come back within 6 months to a year after washed. Homeowners that don’t desire the natural graying or silver, we opt to use a very natural, rich brown color – which holds its color for 5-7 years. This cedartone color provides more protection than the clear as well. Lastly, for homeowners that desire the gray look, but don’t want to sacrifice on protection, we offer our slate gray color.
Don’t Forget Your Favorites
The colors you love are likely present in one way or another in your cedar roof options. We’ll help you find the right option that blends your perfect color to match your desires and your existing home. Our staff is here to answer all of your roofing questions from shingle selection to color matching and future maintenance.
Contact Our Cedar Roofing Specialists
If you’re looking for a team of dedicated professionals to help you maintain your cedar roofing, contact us. We have the experience and knowledge to keep your roof looking naturally beautiful.
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