things to know about cool roofs

In order to fully understand what a cool roof is, it’s important to learn more about the way our homes heat up in the summer and the basic properties that make a cool roof so efficient in diminishing that effect.

A cool roof is basically a roof that has a high ability to reflect the light and heat that’s coming from the sun. In the summer, the amount of heat and radiation increases partly due to an increase in the amount of daylight, but also because of the shifting seasons and the atmosphere’s ability to absorb heat and transfer it to our homes.

Heat is primarily transferred through the high energy infrared and ultra-violet rays coming from the sun. While there are other, high energy rays of radiation that the sun also emits, most of them are filtered by our atmosphere.

In order for a cool roof to be efficient, it has to be able to reflect UV and infrared sun rays. It also needs to have a high degree of what is called “thermal emittance” – which means a Livermore roofing company cool roof can reflect heat that was already absorbed.

These qualities make cool roofs extremely efficient when it comes to keeping heat out of our homes. Many of them are even designed to keep out higher wavelength light which, even though isn’t always present in higher quantities, can still do some damage over the passing of time.