Properties and performance of advanced reflective paints to reduce the cooling loads in buildings and mitigate the heat island effect in urban areas

High reflective coatings and paints spread on the roof and walls can be very useful to reduce the cooling loads in buildings to ensure thermal comfort in the built environment. The solar reflectance of construction and cooling materials was measured with a spectrophotometer. A surface temperature monitoring campaign compared the thermal profiles of typical Italian construction materials with an innovative sustainable white paint, obtained with a special mixture of milk and vinegar of very high solar reflectance. Two building-integration cool-roof campaigns were run in the experimental building, Casa Intelligente of ENEA, in which indoor and outdoor air temperature and roof surface temperatures were monitored. This campaign, run in the summer of 2005 and 2006, allowed us to verify the influence of cool roofs to mitigate indoor air temperatures and to compare the behaviour of different cool-roof technologies.