One common concern that many homeowners have is that metal roofing will make their house hot. They’ve been in a barn before on a warm day and felt the heat on the underside of a metal roof. Metal transfers heat, so it’s natural to believe that on hot days the roofing will send heat right straight through to the house. That’s not necessarily the case, though. If your house is designed, insulated, and ventilated properly, and you get the right roofing system, you shouldn’t have serious trouble with heat on warm days.

Choose EnergyStar® Certified Metal Roofing

One way that you can protect your home from overheating is by investing in metal roofing that’s EnergyStar® rated. This roofing has a special coating that reflects heat away and will help keep your space cooler overall.

It’s All About Air Space

Even the best protectively coated roofing is going to heat up in direct sunlight after awhile. That still doesn’t mean that your home is going to get hot during the summer months though, and that’s because quality metal roofing is installed with a space beneath it that provides ventilation. The roof literally floats on a cushion of cooling air. This air space serves as insulation and creates a tool to pull heat away from the house. Your home’s metal roofing heats up, and then air comes in from underneath the roofing and pulls heat out of the space, helping to prevent your home from warming up.

You don’t get this ventilation underneath the roof with something like shingle roofing, which is why homes with shingle roofing often heat up more significantly in the summer than homes with metal roofing do.

Metal Roofs Don’t Hold Much Heat

Finally, we have to consider how much heat the roofing on your home holds. The longer it holds heat, the more that roofing is going to warm your house up. Fortunately for homeowners with metal roofing, metal doesn’t hold heat long at all. It cools down very rapidly, which means that it won’t warm your house up as long as other roofing materials. That also means that if the temperature drops down outside at night, your home is going to cool down faster if you have metal roofing installed on it. And if you choose a white or light-colored roof, the metal is actually going to reflect significant amount of heating rays rather than absorb them.  The EPA considers light colored metal roofs as 'cool roofs.'

So, while it might seem like metal roofing would encourage your home to heat up faster, the reality is that it will help your home stay cooler and when installed properly the roofing should leave you with a more pleasant interior than you would have with other types of roofing.

Speak with our professionals here at Metal Roofing and Siding of Minnesota and we can answer any of your questions regarding the metal roofing you'd like to have installed on your home.