What should I use for coating Metal Roofs (pictures inside)

[Scott Bartlett]

I know I need to re-coat the roof of my small SFH rental, and I'm planning on using a Elastomeric Roof Coating.

The only question now becomes should I use BLACK (obviously non-reflective), SILVER (reflective) or WHITE (reflective)?

From my understanding, WHITE is better than SILVER, and SILVER is better than BLACK in terms of durability and energy savings.

The issue here is the previous homeowners used a rubber coating "BLACK" a long time ago, and then coated over the peeling black with a WHITE coating.

However, they did not use the coating on the back side of the property.

Now, the black is blistering and is peeling, which has caused the WHITE coating to blister along with it. So, long story short, it looks like crap. I've power washed the roof hoping to see if any of this material was going to come off, but it did not. So, I'll have to coat over it. But with what?

Here you can see both the BLACK and WHITE coating, and the horrible condition the coating is in. If I paint over this with a reflective surface, I'm afraid that the rough surface will cause the finish to look rough compared to a BLACK coating would hide the imperfections and rough surface better than a reflective surface. This picture was taken before the power washing which just removed the vegetation debris.

Thoughts?