Does your patio have afternoon exposure?

We have a composite front porch and back deck. The deck has southern and western exposure and gets so hot in the summer that you cannot touch it with hands or bare feet.

Shade makes a big difference. The covered front porch is fine all day, including in the morning sun. I don’t know if pavers would be worse but if you don’t have afternoon sun beating on your patio, I think either would be fine. If you do have afternoon exposure, could you use an awning, umbrella, or plants for shade?

Concrete Pavers have the benefit of being in direct contact with the ground, which moderates the temperature of the patio. Also - I'm not sure about your region, but here a precast paver patio is more affordable than a similar sized composite deck. Composite decking is actually rather expensive in comparison.

We debated the same issue last year. We chose pavers that will be installed grade level. The cost was lower than the Trex, cooler to the touch and less fading. I know people say composite needs no upkeep and never fades, but I am not so sure about that. The difficult part to the pavers is that steps are necessary since a raised paver was unaffordable. One guy did suggest laying paver tile over the existing deck joists/beams but I did not trust this idea either. And sure enough, once we removed the deck floor boards and joists, we found rotting and splitting footings. It would have been the proverbial lipstick on a pig type of thing.

Make sure your deck footings and beams are truly sound before laying paver tile over the existing deck.

I have the same question. My raised wood deck is rotting and I'm thinking about replacing it with poured and stamped concrete instead of composite or pavers.

Isn't there a newer composite that doesn't run so hot? I've heard of one called TimberTech claiming "heat resistant decking" or is this just marketing?

https://www.timbertech.com/ideas/heat-resistant-composite-decking/

Moistureshield has a technology in their Visions line that offer cooltech that is suppposed tomrun up to 35% (something like that) cooler. I am currently installing it on my 27x20 deck. Last year I tested on some 34 C days in full sun compared to 3 other types of composite. It was definatley cooler tomyhe touch. The infra red thermometer also read cooler readings. I cannot remember exactly how much cooler it was, I did write down the reults and took a couple videos, I would have to look for those results.

Great info, thanks! Please let us know how the finished product performs. Also wonder what region you are located in. I'm in central California. Appreciated.

Up in the prairie provinces of Canada. We get the wild temperature swings from highs of 35 c to lows of -40c lol. In fact couple days ago we broke a high record for thisntime of year 32 or 33c and couple days later -4c with some areas getting lots of snow lol

I will see if I can post pictures later on once I get my decking down.