Talked to a mason in Tucson about stucco color choices

Ran into this old mason at a hardware store Saturday. He said light colors might look cooler but dark ones actually hold up better against the sun's UV rays out here. Anyone else hear the same thing about desert exteriors?

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3 Comments

murray.robert3mo ago

Is the sun bouncing off lighter walls into windows a bigger problem out there?

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wren_mitchell3mo ago

Yeah I've been through this. We did a dark brown stucco on the south facing wall of our place in Phoenix and it's held up way better than the light tan we had before. The old tan got all chalky and faded after a couple years but the dark is still looking good. Only catch is in the summer that wall gets hot enough to fry an egg on it. So if you've got windows near a dark wall the heat coming through them is brutal. We ended up putting some shade cloth over the windows to help with that.

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charles_baker283mo ago

Actually the darker colors tend to fade slower because they absorb the UV rays instead of reflecting them back off the pigment particles. Lighter colors have more white pigment that can break down faster from the sun. We had a light beige on our place in Tucson and it was chalky within 18 months, but the dark gray we switched to has been solid for 4 years now. The heat thing is real though, you're not kidding about that south wall getting nuclear. Did you notice any difference in your cooling bills after switching?

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