Time to Re-evaluate Roof Tile Coatings?

Written by Gordon Grainger, Director and Owner of Kingfisher UK.

When after-market roof tile coatings first appeared, their reputation was quickly and unfairly tarnished. Is it time to look again?

This is a plea for clemency on behalf of roof tile coatings because, full disclosure, I’m a director of a company that manufactures architectural coatings! And I feel strongly that this entire product class has been unjustly maligned and had bad press for too long.

In the noughties and early teens, roof tile coatings were in the dock, accused of crimes against proper roofing practice and durability, to say nothing of dubious marketing claims.  But I would like to share some of our story and make a case for the defence, that roof tile coatings should once more be considered as an integral part of scheduled home maintenance, like masonry paint for walls and timber stain for window frames. Because it actually is in most other countries.

Back in the Day

In 2005 when a colleague first proposed the idea that “we should manufacture our own remedial roof tile coating”, I didn’t even know what that was. He explained that you could clean and re-coat an entire domestic roof in as little as two or three days, resulting in a transformative improvement to otherwise dingy grey, mossy roof tiles.  More than that, at 25-30% of the price of a new roof.

It sounded like an exciting opportunity.

I then remembered we had bid unsuccessfully to make roof paint for a big concrete tile manufacturer, so I dusted off their recipe in search of inspiration. It turned out to be a dated, basic formulation which didn’t cover very well… even the tile makers weren’t doing this right. It was back to the drawing board.

Enlisting the help of the boffins at our polymer suppliers, we trialled several of the new high-bond acrylics, and other bits and bobs to formulate our innovative coating, which resulted in a far better product than we knew how to make at the time to be honest.

Where Did it All Go Wrong?

Kingfisher Kolourseal was well received, and the contractors loved it. But trouble was brewing in the wider market. Doorstep sellers were pushing inferior coatings, mainly floor paint and cheap masonry paint, and the people applying them were mostly inexperienced and untrained. Before long, stories of shoddy workmanship, delamination and sharp selling practices began to appear in the media. Consumer confidence flagged, and sales of all roof tile coatings tanked.

That was frustrating for us and the other quality manufacturers. We knew our products worked, but the damage to the sector’s reputation was done, and we were all tarred with the same brush. Recovery would take a while…

Keeping on Keeping On

In the intervening years, the market recovered a little, and we and other manufacturers focussed on training applicators and providing detailed product support, so that installations were carried out to a consistently better standard.

We developed our seminars into fully detailed systems focussed on preparation and repairs, using feedback from applicators to streamline the process. But the sector never really achieved its initial promise in terms of consumer buy-in.

The Tide Turns

However, as social media became mainstream, we noticed homeowners enthusiastically posting pictures of their freshly renovated roofs and it was rewarding to read those positive reviews.

Additionally, smart phones, sharing on socials and video platforms helped the sector in another positive way: it drove fly-by-night sellers into the shadows. Quality was democratised and positive reviews became the new currency by which increasingly educated homeowners could judge potential trades people.

More Sophisticated Consumers (and Contractors)

As householders gained easier access to product technical data online, they became better-informed buyers, especially about how much surface preparation matters to longevity. This is where years of plugging away at educating applicators started to pay off.

1. Contractors started spotting roof defects and reporting them to clients. The repairs they typically carried out first included:

• Re-bedding ridge tiles with polymer-modified mortar (which suppresses alkalinity) instead of simple sand and cement. This one change helped stop standard alkaline cement from delaminating the coating in strips along the roof ridge, a common and highly visible complaint in the early days.
• Securing or replacing loose verges.
• Replacing damaged or missing tiles with graded secondhand ones rather than new. We’d learned that nice new, unweathered tiles reflect sunlight completely differently from 25-year-old tiles, and they stick out like a sore thumb on a newly coated roof

2. Educated contractors could explain why a biocidal pre-treatment matters. A properly certified biocidal treatment (often called a fungicidal wash) was essential to stop moss and mould undermining newly applied coatings, especially along the tile edges and interlocking joints.

3. Better understanding meant they could answer tougher questions. Take “Is the coating breathable?” They could now explain that the coating is vapour permeable enough not to trap moisture within the tile, and that a roof mainly “breathes” through soffit vents, tile vents and tile overlaps.

Environmental Concerns 

Globally, cement production, the key ingredient in concrete, accounts for about 8% of total CO2 emissions, according to the World Economic Forum. Throwing away roof tiles that still work, just because they look a bit unsightly, is hard to defend on environmental grounds when many can be given a like-new finish in place.

Concrete and clay roof tiles are for the most part highly durable and millions of them have exceeded their original specified design life by decades.  In fact, BRE reports that manufacturers now give expected service life as being 60 years.

A second life for roof tiles has never looked more responsible.

Roof Tile Coatings Have Come of Age

So, is it time to look again? We think so. The defence rests: practically, technically, aesthetically, financially and environmentally, roof tile coatings have earned their place, both as a valuable restoration tool and as a trade skill in their own right.

With better-trained applicators, better-informed homeowners and a strong case for keeping serviceable tiles on the roof, it’s time to treat them like masonry paint and timber stain: a normal part of scheduled home maintenance, and a proper roofing discipline.

If you’re weighing up a tired roof, ask any applicator how they’ll prepare and repair it before a drop of coating goes on. And if you’d like a steer on roof tile coatings, the Kingfisher team is happy to help.