Painting a Greener Future

By Anna Lockhart. 

Industry experts gathered to discuss the importance of sustainable product use in cool roofs and sidings. Here’s what they had to say.  

Over the last decade, Sherwin-Williams has dedicated time and resources into developing sustainable products and working towards a greener future. Recently, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Alex Nicol, R&D group leader, and Ted Best, senior scientist, to discuss the work Sherwin-Williams is doing to offer their customers cleaner and more eco-conscious roofing and siding coatings.  

In particular, they have created solar reflective products that work to improve a structure’s solar reflectivity, resulting in a significantly lower temperature reaching the surface and the structure’s internal temperatures. Reducing the temperature of a structure is important, as it can lower the cost and consumption of energy required to regulate the heat.  

Sherwin-Williams' team of scientists, like Ted, have been working on finding a cool roofing and siding coating since the 1990’s, offering products as soon as the early 2000’s. It wasn’t until 2010 that Ted joined the Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC), a committee of professionals across the industry created to collect and analyze data about cool roofing and siding. “The primary purpose of the Cool Roof Rating Council was to write this or create this database,” said Ted. He explained that not only did they collect data on coatings, but on other traditional roofing materials as well to compare, “So that was, I guess, a broader view of the whole industry and what people are doing with solar reflectance.” 

Since 2016, Alex has worked with the CRRC to submit samples of their products for testing and research on solar reflectance. More and more customers are becoming interested in learning about and using sustainable products that offer this solar reflectance. For example, entities such as Energy Star now have certain solar reflectivity requirements for roofing, and Sherwin-Williams' team of scientiest and color designers have worked hard to design a variety of colors and patterns that meet such strict solar reflectivity requirements. 

 Alex shared that the darker shades of products, which contain higher levels of the solar reflective pigmentation, is in demand more now than ever, “It's been interesting as new versions of building codes have come out, how the SR requirements have increased or changed slightly over time, and it's been pretty amazing to see, especially in the darker colors, how much of an increase we can see with the SR pigmentation. So, in the case of maybe a slate bronze or one of those darker colors, I mean we can see upwards of a 20% increase just in the solar reflectance. And then that has significant implications in terms of surface temperatures and helping to mitigate urban heat island.” 

Learn more about the innovative steps Sherwin-Williams brands are taking to create greener, solar reflective roofing and siding coatings.