Picture the scene – it’s 25 degrees, you’re in the pub beer garden and you’ve got a black t-shirt on. You’re sweltering, but those around you in their white and light-coloured tops are enjoying the sun without a care in the world. They’re not experiencing what you’re suffering and we all know why – who wears dark colours in the sun?!
Dark colours, by nature of the pigments used within them, reflect less light, and absorb more heat. Light colours, by contrast, reflect more light and absorb less heat. There is plenty of day-to-day examples that you can think of where colour impacts the temperature. And it’s the same for UPVC Windows and Doors.
A frequent problem within the refinishing industry is taking white UPVC profile that was never designed to absorb much heat and forcing it to absorb that heat by recolouring it. Once coated, you are encouraging the window/substrate to reflect less heat, which is then absorbed into the profile and then the normal process of solids which are heated gets underway– they start to expand.
This process can cause chaos in certain materials – doors start becoming difficult to lock, windows will not close, panelling starts to bubble. It can become a real concern and might encourage people to avoid certain jobs because of it.
ColorSpray, the market leader in coatings for PVC and GRP, have the answer. Cool Colour is a reformulation of our standard colour ranges that removes the problem Black pigment from the formulation and replaces that with an Infa-Red Reflective (IRR) pigment – that instead of storing the sun’s energy within it, reflects it away, reducing the heat build-up within a substrate. Our Colour Formulation Specialist, Bartosz Machyna, conducted an investigating measuring the heat build-up in building plastics before and after the use of Cool Colour formulations. You can read the in-depth review in our Blog post here.
