COLORSTEEL® & COLORCOTE®
Roofing Colours

There's no single roof colour that suits every Auckland home. Start with the colour of your cladding, brick, joinery, fascia and spouting, along with the style of the house and what's around it. Darker colours create strong contrast against a lighter exterior, while lighter and mid-tone roofs give a softer, more blended look. A villa and a contemporary build often suit quite different combinations. Narrow it down to a few colours, then look at physical samples at the property, because roofing colours look different in daylight than they do on a screen.

Darker colours absorb more solar energy than lighter ones, which reflect more. Colour alone doesn't decide how hot the inside of your home gets, though: insulation, ventilation, glazing, the orientation of the house and the design all matter. To compare colours on this, look at the Total Solar Reflectance figure. A higher TSR means more solar radiation is reflected. COLORSTEEL® lists Ebony at 5% and Titania at 66%, which shows how much the difference can be.

TSR stands for Total Solar Reflectance. It measures how much of the sun's energy a surface reflects, so a higher TSR means more solar radiation is reflected rather than absorbed. LRV stands for Light Reflectance Value, which relates to how much visible light the colour reflects: higher-LRV colours look lighter, lower-LRV colours look darker. The two are related but not the same thing. Pigments and coating technology also influence solar reflectance, which is why two colours that look similar can have different TSR values.

A darker roof works well with a light exterior, because it creates contrast and gives the roofline definition. Deep greys, charcoals, browns and blacks are commonly used that way. You don't have to go dark, though: a light or mid-tone roof gives a softer, more understated look, which often suits coastal and contemporary homes. Either way, consider the roof alongside the finishes you're keeping rather than on its own. Holding a physical sample against the cladding, joinery and spouting is usually the quickest way to decide.

It doesn't have to match exactly. Some people use the same colour for the roof, spouting and fascia for a consistent look. Others treat the roof as a contrast and tie the spouting or fascia into the joinery or cladding instead. What matters is treating the exterior as one colour scheme rather than choosing each part separately. If you're reroofing but keeping the existing joinery, spouting or cladding, compare physical samples against those finishes before the roofing order goes in.

All exterior coatings are exposed to sun, weather and salt air, so some change in colour and appearance happens over time. Both COLORSTEEL® and COLORCOTE® set out paint warranty terms in their warranty documents, and the period depends on the environment the roof sits in, from mild through to very severe coastal exposure. Cover should be checked against the roofing system specified for your property rather than assumed, and we provide the manufacturer's warranty information for whatever we install.

For coastal Auckland properties, the roofing material and coating system matter more than the colour. A property exposed to salt and coastal conditions may need a product designed for a more severe corrosion environment, and the right system depends on that site's exposure rather than on the colour you like. There are also colour-specific restrictions: COLORCOTE® states that its Metallic and Bright colours are not recommended for coastal environments. We look at the property's exposure first, then confirm which products, finishes and colours suit it.

Yes, and we recommend it. Colours on a phone or computer screen differ from the actual pre-painted metal, and a colour looks different again depending on sunlight, shade and the finishes around it. Both COLORSTEEL® and COLORCOTE® recommend viewing physical samples before a final selection. We can get samples to you so you can compare them against your cladding, joinery, fascia and surroundings before ordering.

COLORSTEEL® and COLORCOTE® both offer a wide range of pre-painted metal roofing colours across several finishes and product systems, though their palettes and warranty conditions differ. We don't recommend choosing between the two on colour alone. The property's exposure, the roofing specification, the warranty available and the colour or finish you prefer should all be weighed together.