Solar Heat Reflective Paint

A. Hi. I can answer the first question about colors: if you want to limit infrared heating, white is your only choice. The other questions you ask are a bit more complex, but white paints which are advertised as containing ceramic particles for better reflectivity do in fact work.
Luck & Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E. RET
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

A. Hi, Patty. My first approach would be to look for white paint rather than black.

But you might also see topic 18535, wherein Dr. Con Lozanovski advises of university tests showing the effectiveness of putting reflective ceramic powder into the paint.

A. Hi. A product worth checking out for metal roofs, that I can recommend is Insultec, search for it on the web.

A. Hi, Ken. Rather than trying to find a transparent paint that would stick to glass and would cover it at uniform thickness, Ken, manufacturers tend to offer this instead as a
<== plastic film instead.

A. My experience has been that the inorganic, mixed metal oxide pigments, in some parts of the globe called "ceramic powder" pigments for paints and coatings are every bit what they claim to be. We are uncertain though about ceramic micro-spheres in paints, whether factory mixed or consumer additive) or the assertion that any paint provides insulation value as some claim. An R value measurement of insulation efficiency is a building industry term only associated with bulk layer, SPF foam, styrofoam. or fiberglass panels that are installed. How can something microns thick provide the same R value of 7 when it takes at least an inch of foam to do the same thing? It makes no sense.

The commercial roofing industry had the mixed metal oxides we use in our paints and coatings over 30 years ago and continues to do so with factory coated, baked-on metal roofing.

The U.S. Dept. Of Energy study finished last year and a University of Nevada (UNLV) completed in 2006 showed very strong energy savings in mixed metal oxide pigmented paints on test homes in multiple cities. Due to their high solar reflectively and thermal emissivity for exterior walls, these found electricity use reductions for air-conditioning of 24% in Las Vegas, 21.9% in Los Angeles, 13% in Sacramento. Walls plus roofs (UNLV Study) so coated. showed a 41% total energy savings measured in reduced KWh consumption.