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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this was figured out in the Mediterranean probably a few hundred years ago: https://www.santorini-view.com/white-houses-of-santorini

Unfortunately, we are losing some of this cumulative knowledge due to it not being documented, and due to the looks of alternatives (although the grey buildings in the US are as ugly as it can get)

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We're not losing the information that light colors heat less in the sun. Neither could anyone who spent five minutes on a black roof in the sun forget that tidbit. It's just that other factors than the energy required to cool a building took precedence in the past.

Anecdotally it seems like we are. The rad thing to do in my area of california is to paint your white washed spanish style home mud brown or ozzy osbourne black. Then you have to install a much more powerful AC system when in the past maybe just opening windows and getting crossbreeze was enough. All these houses used to have awnings over sun facing windows when they were build in the 1920s but at some point that must have been seen as ugly and its now pretty rare to see.

That rad thing to do is an example of what they meant by other things taking precedence.

  > The rad thing to do in my area of california is to paint your white washed spanish style home mud brown or ozzy osbourne black.

It seems that the Ames Research Center is rather rad hardened, then. Fitting. JPL too, for that matter.

Well also asphalt tiles being cheaper material and cheaper installation on sloped roofs (snow!) over wood frame construction.

They're only cheaper in the short term. Long term energy costs and replacement costs factor in strongly, and chances are that once you make that calculation you'll end up with old fashioned terracotta roofs being cheaper over the life of the house.

I don't really like how the old fashioned terracota roofs behave during the summer. They heat up during the day and release that heat in night time, driving the inabitants crazy with heat. Maybe with some kind of ceramic coating to increase the albedo they'd be okay.

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