Picking a Shingle Color That Works With Brick and Stone

Your roof covers more of your home's visible surface than almost anything else, and you'll look at its color every day for years. Yet many homeowners choose it from a small sample under store lights. When the house has brick or stone, the choice is trickier, because that material has its own colors and they can't be changed. This post walks through how to pick a shingle color that works with what you already have.

Start with the undertone of your brick

Brick looks like one color from the street, but it isn't. Look closely and you'll see red, orange, brown, tan, or even grey, plus the mortar between the bricks. The overall feel, warm or cool, is the undertone. A warm red brick sits well with roofs that have brown, charcoal, or black in them. A tan or cream brick can handle softer browns and greys. Stone mixes several tones in the same wall, so find the shades that repeat most and match to those, not to the one that stands out.

Pick a shingle that shares something with the brick, either an undertone or a depth, and let it differ in another way. Total matching looks flat. Total contrast looks like an accident. The roofs that look best usually feel like they belong to the house without disappearing into it. Stand across the street and squint a little. If the roof and the brick read as one calm picture, you're close. If one of them jumps out, keep looking.

Look at samples the right way

Never decide from a chip held indoors. Ask for a full-size shingle sample, or photos of the actual product on a finished roof, and carry it outside. Hold it against the brick, the stone, the trim, the garage door, and the gutters. Look in morning light, at midday, and in the evening. A shingle that looks grey in one hour can look brown in another. A roof is a big surface, so colors tend to look deeper and bolder up there than they do in a small sample.

If you can, drive past homes that already have the shingle you're considering, ideally ones with brick or stone like yours. Real houses in real light beat any brochure. Ask your roofer for photos of jobs they've finished on similar homes, and take a look at the ones in your own area.

Think about the whole exterior

Roof color is one piece of a set that includes siding, trim, gutters, garage doors, the front door, and landscaping. If you're replacing garage doors or gutters at the same time, as one JAD Homes customer did on a single insurance claim, plan the colors together. It's much easier to choose everything in one conversation than to match a roof to doors that were picked years earlier or later. Also think about the trees around the house. Green leaves in summer and bare branches in winter change how a roof reads.

What a church roof taught us

A church review shows the same idea at a larger scale. When JAD Homes replaced the roof and steeple at Holiday Island Presbyterian Church, the church wrote that the crew helped choose roof tiles that looked best with the building. Members commented on how nicely the colors looked with the building and the landscaping. That's a good test for any roof: how it sits with everything around it, not just how it looks as a sample.

Another customer wrote that Jordan helped them pick a color that matched their brick, and that it looked fantastic. Both stories come down to the same thing. Someone looked at the real building in real light and made the call with the owner, instead of choosing from a catalog.

Practical checks before you commit

Check whether your neighborhood or homeowners association has rules about roof color before you fall in love with a shingle. Think about the long run too. A roof stays up for a long time, so a trend color that feels fresh today may feel dated later. Neutral blends with brick and stone tend to age well, and you can add personality with the front door, the trim, or the landscaping, which are easier to change down the road.

If you're planning a new roof and want help matching your brick or stone, call JAD Homes at (479) 640-1444 or request a free estimate. We're open Monday through Saturday, 7 AM to 7 PM.