I don't know if you've chosen your shingle color yet, but I know how you feel. I felt very apprehensive when picking out my shingle color. I had the look of our home in my head, and it had a dark roof, not black, but dark. When picking my brick and mortar color, NOBODY agreed with my selection except for my husband. The supply company even told my builder that it was NOT a color of mortar that was ever used with my brick color. After that was over, then there was the shingle selection. Apparently noone agreed with that either, except my husband. Everytime I picked a dark color, someone from my building team would hesitate. Finally the project lead suggested Autumn Brown by Tamko at www.tamko.com. It has a combination of browns with a chocolate brown, which is the color of our mortar. The shingles went up on the house today, and will be completed tomorrow, and the color is perfect for the house. I was concerned, even after we ordered a sample and set it next to the brick and mortar samples. I also used www.colorplan.com to give me a clue as to what colors might look good on the roof. I hope you are pleased with your choice. Here is a link that might be useful: My home build blog

Instead of permanently-installed steps with the flashing issues that may ensue, may I suggest you get a roof ladder with roof peak hooks and just hook it over the peak and leave it installed. It's not really noticeable most situations and provides ready access for a host of roof-top jobs.. You can even get ladder hooks with rolling wheels that make it a snap to roll it up and hook it over the peak. I do the slate repairs on our seven two-story plus buildings, and of course you can't walk on slate. We also heat with wood so have frequent needs to go up and clean out chimneys. We keep a ladder permanently just lying on the backside of the roof right next to the chimney. Then all we need to do is raise an extension ladder to the eave and step right on to the roof ladder. On a different wing we keep another roof ladder permanently on the roof to access our private cell service repeater (it needs tweaking after every big windstorm, alas.) The roof ladders are just single leafs of an appropriately-sized extension ladder taken apart (a two-fly ladder yields two sections that are used independently.) I think the reason we do that is it is cheaper than buying a single ladder that long. We got the last one at Home Depot or Lowes. I buy the roof hooks from the source below because I often take the permanent ladders off to work on other roofs. Having wheels enables me, a smallish-sized woman, to easily slide 16 and 20 foot ladder sections right up to the peaks and hook 'em over.You can find non-rolling ones in many places, and that may be fine if you aren't moving the ladder very often. I think that having a ladder would be safer than stairs, because the ladder will help you keep in mind that you need to keep your weight into the roof. You can get in real trouble standing upright on a roof as if it was level ground. If your roof is really steep, you should be wearing a fall-protection harness system. I do on our tallest and steepest barns, and my DH who works for a solar company uses one every time he's on a roof. You can get harness systems from this same source, which specializes in roofworking (especially for slate and metal roofs) supplies and tools. I have been their customer for years, and never been disappointed. They have all the good - and often hard to find - stuff needed for slate work (except the slate!). HTH L. Here is a link that might be useful: Roof hooks with rolling wheels

fun colors, The heather blend is the last one on the right next to the cream/yellow (more cream) siding. Holding it up to the house and the siding the brown did not seem to be right. Out of frustration, I picked up a timberline dark brown at home depot and that brown did not seem to work either. Read on the net, don't have the link, that roof color will appear 1 shade lighter and/or appear 1 shade lighter shortly after installation. So . . . if the moire black would fade a little, would be a plus to me. It's either the A/C bills or the algae. Figured I might have to change to green or other shade of red for door with roof change. Pretty sure neighbors will not be anticipating that so more explaining may be in order. There is some work involved, not all fairyland magic. Anyway, the main reason for the red door was when you have the exposed door with no overhang the black door gets hot as HE_L and bakes like it's in an oven. It was originally black which looked good for color, but the color was melting. The roof extension will probably allow for more color selection. The red is popular here. Everyone comments on how they love the red door and many in the neighborhood immediately painted their door red too. Must admit it stands out a little too much with no landscaping. After the roof, the next outdoor project will be bringing in additional soil and replacing the walkway. It has cracks, sadly, concrete does that. We love the color brown, but in sample form those browns did not look promising. Keep in mind, trim and gutters will stay white, so let me know if some roof color selections will look bad given that consideration.

Thank you for your opinions. The photos are from the builder's website- their colors are the same as ours. We just recently moved in, but we had hail storm. So we will have to replace the whole roof! May i ask why you don't like GAF? In comparison to OC oakridge (not duration), GAF timberline is better choice, i thought.