I tested it to find out!
If you choose black shingles, will your house be hotter in the summer?
A lot of people are certain the answer is yes. After I made a video about roof color, one viewer compared the question to asking whether water is wet. Another told me I was simply wrong. I wanted to see what I could measure for myself.
So I built three identical little structures. One had black shingles, one had medium gray shingles, and one had the lightest shingles I could find locally. I put a digital thermometer inside each structure and measured the temperature on each shingle surface throughout the day.
The short answer: The structure with black shingles ended up hotter inside than the one with light-colored shingles. But this test did not show that black shingles would make the living space inside a real house that much hotter. Here’s what happened and why that distinction matters.
How I set up the test
Each little roof had about 18 square feet of shingle surface. I placed the interior thermometers on insulation packs so they wouldn’t sit directly on the ground and pick up its temperature.
Early in the morning, before the sun had warmed the roofs, the three interior thermometers were within four-tenths of a degree of one another. That was a useful starting point: the structures were reading nearly the same temperature before roof color had much chance to affect them.
I also planned to measure the surface temperature of each roof. My expectation was that the black shingles would get much hotter than the light ones, while the temperatures inside the structures might stay fairly close together.
The weather made things interesting. We’re at about 7,200 feet in the Colorado Springs area, and the day grew hot, but clouds kept moving across the sun. When the shingles weren’t in direct sunlight, their surface temperatures were almost identical. Once the sun came out, the differences became easier to see.
What the thermometers showed
Here are the approximate readings from the clearest points in the test:
| Time | Gray shingle surface | Black shingle surface | Light shingle surface | Inside gray structure | Inside black structure | Inside light structure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Around noon | 123°F | 122°F | 115°F | 97.1°F | 98.6°F | 95.1°F |
| Around 1:15 p.m. | 141°F | 142°F | 132°F | 103.2°F | 107.2°F | 102.3°F |
At the final reading, the black shingles were about 10°F hotter on the surface than the light-colored shingles. Inside the structures, the difference was about 5°F, with the black-roofed structure the hottest.
One surprise was how close the black and gray surface readings were. At noon, the gray shingles even measured a little hotter than the black ones. Sunlight was changing as clouds passed, and a shingle reading could climb while I was taking it. I wouldn’t treat a one- or two-degree difference between those two roofs as a firm result.
Another thing worth noticing: the light shingles reached about 132°F. A lighter roof surface may be cooler in the sun, but that doesn’t mean it stays cool to the touch.
Does that prove black shingles make a house hotter?
No. It shows that the black-roofed structure got hotter inside during this test. That’s a narrower answer than the one most homeowners are looking for.
The space inside my little structures was directly beneath the roof. A typical home has an attic, a ceiling, and insulation between the shingles and the rooms where people live. My test was closer to comparing attic temperatures than living room temperatures. It didn’t measure how much heat would pass through an insulated ceiling.
The roofs were also small. An 18-square-foot test roof is very different from a full-sized roof, and this was one afternoon with changing cloud cover. I can’t take the five-degree difference I measured and tell a homeowner, “Black shingles will make your house five degrees hotter.” The experiment doesn’t support that claim.
To test that question more directly, I’d need larger structures with attic spaces and insulated ceilings, built as consistently as possible. Then I’d need to measure both the attics and the rooms below them over more than one day.
What should you consider when choosing a roof color?
If you love the look of black or dark shingles, I wouldn’t let this small test scare you away from them. The results give you a reason to expect differences at the shingle surface and potentially in the attic; they don’t tell you how much warmer your living space will be.
On the other hand, if your upstairs rooms are uncomfortably hot, I wouldn’t assume that switching to light-colored shingles will solve the problem. Before making a roof-color decision based on comfort, find out what’s happening in your attic. Is there adequate insulation between the attic and your rooms? How is the attic ventilated? Those questions deserve attention regardless of which shingle color you choose.
I started this experiment expecting a large temperature difference on the shingle surfaces and very little difference inside the structures. The interior readings surprised me. They also helped me see the limit of my setup: I answered a question about three small spaces beneath three roofs, but I haven’t yet answered the bigger question about a real house.
For now, my advice to Colorado Springs homeowners is to choose a shingle color you’ll be happy to see for years—and make sure you understand the insulation and ventilation beneath your roof. Roof color is one part of the picture, not the whole answer to whether your house stays comfortable in summer.