Eeek! See the The BIG Mistakes You’re Making Choosing A Roof Shingle Color!
Design tips on how to avoid these mistakes and pick the perfect shingle color that coordinates with your home’s brick, siding, door and trim colors!
Curious about my front porch chairs, wreath and decor? Click on the images below to see more information about the same or similar items!
Wicker chairs – IKEA
The BIG Mistakes You’re Making Choosing A Roof Shingle Color:
Picking the perfect shingle color for your home is a BIG decision!
According to 2021 stats, most roofing contractors (and many insurance companies) will price their roof replacement services within $3.50 to $5.50 per square foot for asphalt roofing shingles.
(slate tiles and copper roofs can be much more expensive due to the increased cost in the natural materials)
Based on that, you can expect to pay between $6,000 and $9,350 for a 1,700-square foot roof. That’s a lot of money!
If you make a mistake with the shingle color you just can’t remove and replace them, because you’ve spent a good chunk of money removing the old ones and replacing them.
The right shingle color will give your home massive curb appeal and enjoyment!
The wrong shingle color will make your home look unappealing and will throw off all of the other exterior colors. This makes a home look off-kilter and disjointed.
Shingle color can make or break the look of your home’s exterior, so make sure you aren’t making these big design mistakes when choosing one!
So let’s look at the mistakes you could be making and the correct ways to choose the perfect shingle color!
I’m also showing you lots of pictures of how I chose the perfect shingle color for our home when we recently replaced our worn out shingles!
If you have a family member or friend that is replacing their shingles, please share this post with them! Thank you!
PIN THIS AND SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!
The Most Popular Roof Shingle Colors For 2022
The most popular colors for asphalt shingles include:
- black – white houses which are very popular today look beautiful with black shingles and make the white exterior pop.
- dark gray
- light gray
- light brown hues—sand, taupe, desert
- dark brown hues—autumnal brown, tree bark, weathered wood
MISTAKE #1 When Choosing A Roof Shingle Color
You don’t research the shingle colors on the homes in your neighborhood!
This is one of the first things you should do when you need to pick a shingle color! See what color your neighbors’ have and how their shingle colors interact with their siding and brick colors.
Do any colors stand out that you love? Write them down!
Does a brown roof speak to you? A gray roof?
What about dark roof colors compared to light colors?
Location matters! If you live in a hot climate, a lighter-colored roof will help reflect the UV rays and keep your home cooler in the hot summer months.
Go for a walk around your neighborhood, and a drive around a wider area, to find a house that may have similar brick and siding as yours. What shingle color did they use? Do you love it? Dislike it? Make notes on your observations.
Need help decorating or help picking paint colors? I offer online design services and paint color advice! See the info, my designs & client reviews here!
MISTAKE #2
You don’t research the brochures and color samples from the roofing companies that you get quotes from.
Roofing companies will have lots of brochures of the colors of shingles they use. Ask for them – they will be happy to give them to you free of charge with your quote.
We received 3 quotes for replacing our shingles and asked for brochures from all of the companies.
Take some time and look through the brochures and look at each color.
Some of the brochures will have actual samples of the shingles.
See picture below – the top brochure shows the different colors this roofing company uses.
There are browns, tans, blues, grays, blacks, greens and even a reddish color. Eliminate the ones you absolutely dislike.
For me I automatically eliminated red, dark green and sand/tan and light and dark blue.
Some brochures have an artist rendering of the shingle color and the shading, as seen in the brochure at the bottom of the picture below. Take notes of which ones you love and dislike.
What I loved about these shingles are that they are a color blend so they don’t look flat. You’ll notice darker colors mixed with lighter ones.
These are ‘designer shingles’ – they do have more than 1 color and create some shading and style to the roof.
Once I had the brochures, I narrowed my color likes to dark gray, deep brown and light black.
Shingle brochures we received from roofing companies:
MISTAKE #3
You don’t test big samples of the shingles outdoors to see what they look like in exterior lighting and with your brick, stone veneer, stucco and siding colors.
Your roof color needs to coordinate with all the other exterior colors so they don’t clash.
The shingle color also needs to mesh with your home’s style, the natural surroundings and all of the exterior elements.
The goal is to pick the best color that will compliment your home’s architecture and increase curb appeal.
Once you’ve selected the roofing company you will be using, request large samples of all the shingle colors you are interested in.
You can borrow them for free for a week! Our roofing company dropped the samples off and picked them up a week later, free of charge.
Take the samples outside and look at them with your exterior colors.
Take each shingle sample and move it around your home, prop it up by your brick, by your siding, your door, your trim, your garage door and by any exterior stonework you have.
Each time you move it to a location, look at the shingle sample a few feet away and then across your street to get a complete picture of how the color will play with the exterior colors of your home.
You will eliminate some colors right away using this process because you’ll be able to see that some colors just don’t work with your siding color or brick color.
After I did this process I narrowed it down to a dark gray and a light black color.
These two colors looked the best with our tan siding that has a green undertone, our white trim, our tan brick and greige stonework.
I didn’t compare it to our front door color or garage door color because we will be painting them soon.
Now that you have colors narrowed down to two, go through the process again and pick your favorite color!
I chose onyx black – which is actually a very soft black, almost deep charcoal.
In the below picture you can see the mid-toned cinnamon brown shingle color that we replaced.
You can also see the shingle samples I propped up by the garage door and by the left window. This allowed me to see how they played with our stone color, siding color and trim color.
Click on the images below to see more information about my front porch furniture and decor – the same or similar items!
Wicker chairs – IKEA
Large shingle samples from our roofing company:
Moving the samples around my home to see how they looked with our siding and stone colors:
Looking at this color with our stone step color and walkway features:
MISTAKE #4
You don’t look at the shingle colors at the back of your home, the sides or your back yard shed when choosing a roof shingle color.
Don’t forget to look at these areas of your home’s exterior when selecting your shingle color!
Once I had my colors narrowed down to three, I took them to the back of our home and the sides and looked at how the color played with these areas of my home.
We also decided to reshingle our shed to match our home.
So I took the shingle samples to our back shed and viewed them with our shed siding, .
Completing this step really helped me to decide on one color.
MISTAKE #5 When Choosing A Roof Shingle Color
You don’t look at the shingle samples outdoors during different times of the day.
Make sure you look at the shingle colors in full sunlight and at dusk. The colors will look different in brighter light and low light.
Just like when picking paint colors, you have to look at how colors look in your home in low and high natural light.
Looking at my shingle colors at the end of our driveway in full sunlight
Now you should have your shingle colors narrowed down to one color!
Congratulations! You have just chosen the roof shingle color for your home!
What a BEAUTIFUL impact it will have on your home’s curb appeal!
The picture below shows our new shingle color: Onyx Black. It’s a soft black almost dark charcoal color. We love it!
It gives our home the welcoming elegant look that we love and goes beautifully with our trim, siding color and brickwork.
It creates such beautiful curb appeal!
We plan on repainting our front door and garage color to a soft black to tie it all in.
Our new shingle color: Onyx Black!
Here’s one more tip when getting your roof reshingled. Make sure you keep the extra leftover shingles that you’ve purchased. You never know if you may have to fix a few down the road.
Here are a few more helpful tips when choosing your roof shingle color:
1. Create a Pinterest board and pin roof colors that you love.
2. Go to Houzz ( a home design and decor inspiration site ) and start an idea book, saving pictures of roof colors you love.
(You can also go to Houzz >Professionals to find a roofing company in your area!)
3. Once you’ve chosen the roofing company that you’ll be working with, visit their shingle supplier’s website. Take a look at their colors online. You may be able to see gallery pictures of homes with the various colors.
4. Visit model homes in your area and homes in new subdivisions. You will be able to get inspiration from the new trend roof colors they use.
I hope you enjoyed my post and tips on The BIG Mistakes You’re Making Choosing A Roof Shingle Color! What’s your favorite tip?
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Heather is a Designer, True Color Expert® and proud military wife at 
Ah! I’ve never thought of these before- so helpful.
Thanks Becca!! It’s important to get the color right because you can’t do it over easily!
Great ideas to think about! Thank you!
Thanks for all the helpful tips!! I will have to keep these in mind!
I’m so glad you like these tips Kristyn!
These were quite helpful. Thanks Heather for sharing them!
I desperately need help choosing the right shingles for my house! I’ve narrowed the colors down to browns and nature colors, such as Weathered Wood, but noticed that several shingle Manufacturers have different colors in Weathered Wood. I also love the three dementiional architectural shingle, such as the GAF Timberline HDZ line, but can’t pick a color.
My house is two story, and the brick color is Colonial orange, with tan mortar, and we have a gable roof.
The windows are white , and we have just removed the shutters. Could I send a picture.
Thank you!
Hello Vj – Yes I can definitely help you pick the right style and color of shingle. Email me [email protected] with a picture and we can discuss my online design services and your shingle dilemma!
Can a roof be painted if the color clashes with the house?
I made a huge mistake not taking the local weather into account. I choose dark brown- looks awesome – great for winter but awful in summer in the desert southwest!!! In addition having an evaporative cooler that at some point will leak and leave white water stains all over – luckily it faces to back and not street BUT I know!
Now here I am having to deal with winter damage and having to go thru the process again. At least I know to get a lighter color but they really don’t have too many to pick from 😢!