Cool metal roofs: Where efficiency meets durability

By Emma Peterson. 

Discover why metal roofing is leading the market when it comes to cool roofing solutions.  

Finding success in a competitive industry like roofing is all about differentiating yourself and knowing what your customers want. And right now, some of the primary concerns for home and business owners are rising temperatures and energy costs. To learn how you can help solve this issue for your clients, we hosted Melissa Dunson, director of marketing at Central States Manufacturing, and Audrey McGarrell, communications manager for Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC), for an episode of Roofing Road Trips®. 

Cool roofs are the solution 

So, what can you do to address rising energy costs and increasing environmental temperatures? The answer is simple: Cool roofing. At its core, cool roofing is all about reflectance. A cool roof is one that reflects more sunlight, and therefore absorbs less thermal energy than your typical roof.  

The result of higher reflectance? Audrey explained, “By fundamentally keeping the building cooler, you are reducing demand for air conditioning, which can lead to a chain reaction that goes as far as reducing your carbon footprint and your energy bill.” Melissa added to Audrey’s point, sharing, “There are estimates that a cool roof can lead to as much as 20% of savings on the energy bill, which is huge, especially if you live in a part of the country where it is significantly hot during a significant part of the day, like Texas, Arizona, California, Florida.” 

Sourcing cool roofing 

When it comes to finding the right cool roofing products for specific projects, a great place to start is with CRRC’s Rated Roof Products Directory. Audrey shared a bit about it:  

We are a completely independent third party and work with accredited independent testing laboratories to test roofing and exterior wall materials for solar reflectance and thermal emittance. Once we’ve done our testing, we review the data and publish an initial rating. It’s called that because we also send product specimens to three different test farms across the United States where they are mounted and exposed to the natural elements and left untouched for three years. After those three years, we test them again and give them an aged rating. 

This aged rating truly takes the Rated Roof Products Directory to another level. Melissa spoke about why having both the initial and aged is so important, explaining, “The age testing is key because people don't get a roof for just three years. Roofs are an investment and how it performs on year ten is equally as important as its performance on day one.”  

Cool metal roofs are the future 

Based on data from this aged testing, metal roofing has emerged as a great option for a cool roof. Melissa explained:  

One of the things that we found about metal is it performs year after year in very strong way. That’s one of the reasons that metal has such long warranties...It also has innate properties that give it higher reflectance and emittance rates than tile, asphalt or other materials. So, add special cool roofing paints to it and it's even more reflective. So metal is really a natural fit if people are looking for a long-lasting, durable, cool roof. 

Listen to the whole episode to learn more about getting high-performance, cool metal roofs.