Color Changing Roof Tiles Absorb Heat In Winter, Reflects In Summer

What colors? Well, your basic power colors of course, black and white. Or to make your art teacher cringe – black and white makes green.

Black surfaces absorb the sun’s heat very efficiently, producing hot surfaces. In the wintertime, that can be a good thing: A dark roof heats up in the sun and helps reduce your heating bill. But in summertime, it’s definitely a bad thing: Your house gets even hotter, and your air conditioning has to work harder. In most places, the summertime penalty is greater than the wintertime gain, it turns out, so that’s why many people, including U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, strongly advocate switching to white roofs. (more…)