Would depend on rest of colour scheme.

Yes dark colours get hotter. You'd avoid if in North Queensland and exposed to the sun perhaps but in Melbourne it would be fine.

The key is good ventilation and insulation.

A Surfmist roof will mean little if the rooms trap heat in summer, it'll still be poor.

Shale grey or Monument for me.

The colour may affect the temperature in the attic, but it's unlikely to have much consequence for the rest of the house.

Your insulation layer will be right above the plasterboard ceiling, so heat from the roof might heat the ceiling cavity but it's unlikely to get down into the rooms very much.

The attic is the exception as it's exposed more-or-less directly to the underside of the roof.

Roof colours causing overheating is more of an issue with thin flat roofs which have minimal insulation.

I'm with you Karyn, a light colour is the way to go.

Dark coloured roofs not only result in a hotter house, but the cumulative effect of the 'trend' of dark roofs results in entire suburbs & cities being hotter.

Google the "urban heat island effect". Cities can be up to 3-4°C hotter than the surrounding countryside, due to dark coloured surfaces & the use of high thermal mass materials (which retain heat), such as concrete.

I recently completed my owner built house and shed. My shed has shale grey roof and walls and is very cool all year round in The Atherton Tablelands near Cairns. My neighbor used monument and has a very hot shed. My house has a shale grey roof and the walls are cement block painted with shale grey(Taubmans). The garage door and is surfmist which looks white. The window and door frames are white. I love the look and what ceiling space I have does not get overly hot. The shale grey roof appears lighter than the walls because of the reflected light. This gives a nice contrast. Another neighbor has a surmist roof which can be too glarey to look at. Bear in mind that monument being dark will also show more noticeable fading than shale grey.

We just began our house renovation and have had our roof restored and painted in surfmist and it’s lovely. We too were tossing up those other colors. As we are creating a Hamptons home we have done surfmist roof, gutters, down pipes fascia with dune walls and we are going to paint our scyon decking monument. One thing we noticed about the roof is that it changes a lot depending on the sky - at sunset it almost reflects the dusk. It’s really lovely and we didn’t regret it.

Hi Victoria

That sounds great! What colour was your roof before and what material? We have an icky green metal roof which I’d love to redo in a lighter/better colour. You‘ve given me a glimmer of hope.

Hi Gelade. We had the same roof color! Our house is like a big farmhouse surrounded by a huge deck. The old owners had painted it in heritage colors so green tin roof, dark red gutters and yellow cream walls. It was left to just get run down before we bought it. The surfmist really lifted it.

Oops sorry - Hi Sue. Didn’t mean to call you just by your surname. One thing I will say about the tin roof is that as long as it’s in good condition with no leaks and you get rid of any rusted sheets, it’s comes up brand new and beautiful. Definitely keep the hope up!

Hi Karyn,
We’re also in the process of building. We initially chose monument but
have chosen to go with Dune instead. I preferred the shale grey but hubbie wasn’t keen, so dune was the compromise.
If you do choose monument, i would suggest upgrading your insulation. I found the Bradford insulation website useful as it has information on which type of insulation is recommended for colourbond roofs (ie. for lighter roofs their R4.0 batts would be sufficient but for darker roofs the rating went up to R5.0-R7.0).
Also, if you visit a place that builds sheds using colourbond, this can give you a better idea of what the colours will look like. I wish we had thought to do this before our selections!

hi what is your colour pallette for the rest of the exterior finishes? Cladding, scyon details, and windows and doors? Also fascias, downpipes, gutters are all part of it. Also what is the setting - bush rural or urban? I've recently had a similar dilemma and met with a free colour consultant at the local Mitre 10. Whilst I'm confident in my sense of colour, it really helped to put together a total colour pallette, including internal wall colours also. This is making subsequent minor decisions easier also.

One thing to bear in mind is that roof colours appear lighter under the full sun. I would certainly avoid monument - so overused. But yes, it all has to be considered with the whole house.