Choosing an exterior color in Florida usually comes with a trade-off. Dark, rich colors look great, but they soak up the sun’s heat and can make your walls hot to the touch. Cool Colors by Rhino Shield changes that. Every Rhino Shield color is now tinted with a new system that includes seven infrared-reflecting colorants, designed to bounce back more of the sun’s invisible heat while still giving you the exact color you picked.
Rhino Shield was already a thick, ceramic-enhanced coating built for Florida’s sun, rain and humidity. Cool Colors adds another layer of protection: smarter color science that helps your home stay cooler on the outside and look better for longer.
Author: Lauren Seibold | Organic Marketing Lead
What are cool Colors By Rhino Shield
Cool Colors is Rhino Shield’s new heat-reflective color system. Colorants are the concentrated pigments mixed into the coating to create your color. Our new system uses twelve colorants, and seven of them are infrared reflecting (IRR). That means reflectivity is built into every color we mix, and even our clear base.
To build it, Rhino Shield partnered with Vibrantz Technologies, a global leader in pigments and color technology with 55 manufacturing plants and about 500 patents worldwide. Vibrantz brings together companies known for tinting systems and infrared-reflective pigments, so the same expertise used in high-performance coatings now goes into your home’s exterior.
- Cooler color: Helps limit heat build-up on sun-exposed walls.
- More color freedom: Especially valuable if you love darker or deeper tones.
- Same Rhino Shield performance: Long-lasting ceramic protection, now paired with heat-reflective color science.
cooler color
Helps limit heat build-up on sun-exposed walls.
More Color freedom
Especially valuable if you love darker or deeper tones.
rhino shield performance
Long-lasting ceramic protection plus heat-reflective color science.
The "Cool" Concept
How do cool colors keep you home cooler?
Sunlight is more than what you can see. Along with visible light, the sun sends out infrared light, which you can’t see but you can feel as heat. Traditional dark paints absorb a lot of that infrared energy, which is why a dark wall can get so hot in the afternoon sun. In fact, normal black paint reflects only about 5% of infrared heat.
Cool Colors works differently. The infrared-reflecting pigments bounce back more of that invisible heat energy, while the visible color stays exactly the one you chose. You get the look of a deep, bold color without your walls absorbing as much heat.
What does this mean for your home?
- Lower surface temperatures on sun-facing walls (conditions vary)
- Less thermal stress from repeated heating and cooling cycles
- Potential comfort and efficiency benefits, depending on climate, shade, insulation and HVAC use
The Results
How Much more heat do cool colors reflect?
Reflectivity is measured as Total Solar Reflectance (TSR): the percentage of the sun’s total energy a surface bounces back instead of absorbing. The higher the number, the less heat your walls take in. We tested the same Rhino Shield colors with our previous universal colorants and with the new Vibrantz IRR colorants.
That’s a big deal for Florida homeowners who love dark colors. A black Rhino Shield home now reflects roughly four times as much of the sun’s energy as before. With electric rates rising across the country, that’s heat your walls don’t have to soak up.
Color
Previous Universal Colorants
New Cool Colors (IRR)
Improvement
Black
5.87% TSR
24.84% TSR
About 4X more reflective
Deep Teal (Nassau Nights)
12.5% TSR
33.97% TSR
About 2.7X more reflective
Color Freedom
Can I still choose any color with cool colors?
Yes. You don’t have to pick from a small “cool” collection. The new system can match 97.4% of the Rhino Shield fan deck, and reflectivity is added to every color we tint. Whether you want a soft coastal white, a classic gray or a deep navy, your color gets the Cool Colors benefit.
The new tinting software is also smarter. It’s programmed to choose the most durable colorants first and to use cleaner, more efficient formulas. And because it’s built for easy updates, future improvements (like an even more reflective black already in development) will be added automatically.
Want help picking? Our color selection and matching process walks you through it step by step.
Reviewed By: Ryan Adams | Owner of Rhino Shield of Florida
Built To Last
Will Cool Colors Fade in the Florisa Sun?
Fade resistance was the top priority when choosing the new colorants. Florida sun is tough on color, so every option went through more than 52,000 hours of accelerated weathering in Xenon Arc weatherometers and QUV A and B chambers. These machines blast samples with intense UV light, heat and moisture to simulate years of outdoor exposure in a fraction of the time.
We compared several options for the hardest colors (four blacks and five blues), tested them in actual Rhino Shield bases, and kept only the most durable. The tough-to-hold colors we focused on, like black and turquoise, showed virtually no fading.
What is the Blue Wool test?
Think about a T-shirt left out in the sun all summer. The color slowly gets lighter a.k.a. – fading. The Blue Wool test checks how well a color can stand up to sunlight before it fades.
Here’s how it works. Testers use eight strips of blue wool, numbered 1 to 8. Strip 1 fades really fast, in just days or weeks of sun. Strip 8 hardly fades at all. Each number is about twice as tough as the one before it.
The color being tested goes under bright light right next to the strips. Whichever strip it fades like is its score. A 1 means it fades fast. An 8 means it’s the toughest score you can get, the same level used for museum-quality materials.
Every base pigment in Cool Colors scored an 8 out of 8. That means we chose the most fade-resistant pigments the test can measure, which is a big deal under the strong Florida sun.
FAQ: Cool Colors By Rhino Shield
No. Cool Colors isn't an upgrade or an add-on. It's built into every color we tint, so it comes standard with every Rhino Shield project.
No. Cool Colors technology is built into every color we tint, including our clear base. We can match 97.4% of our fan deck.
Cool Colors helps your exterior reflect more of the sun's heat, which can lower surface temperatures on sun-facing walls. Actual comfort and energy benefits depend on your home's sun exposure, shade, insulation and HVAC use.
Yes, that's where they shine. In our testing, black reflected about 4x more of the sun's energy with Cool Colors than with our previous colorants.
The new colorants went through more than 52,000 hours of accelerated weathering testing, and the base pigments earned the top 8 out of 8 Blue Wool lightfastness rating.
Homes with long, intense sun exposure, and homeowners who want darker, bolder colors without the extra heat dark paint usually brings.
No. Cool Colors is part of how we tint your color, so your warranty works the same way. See Warranty & Services for the details.