From the moment we uttered the words, “we’re planning on painting our house black,” the questions and comments started rolling in. “I would love to go dark, but our electricty bill would be outrageous!” “You must live in a northern state where you don’t have hot summers.” “How high is your electricity bill going to be in the summer?” We took all of these things into account before we made our decision about painting the house black. We ultimately decided that it was worth it even if we ended up having to pay more for electricity in the summer. Texas summers can best be described as “hot as blazes for months on end,” so we definitely use our fair share of power in those hot summer months.
But I was curious. Even though we decided we didn’t care if we were using more energy, were we actually using more energy now that our house was black versus when the house was a pale yellow? I had to find out. I went back into the archives of our electricity bills and did some quick comparisons. This summer we’ve been dealing with record breaking heat, so I knew we would really be putting the black house to the test. Thankfully our electricity bill shows the average temperature that it was on any given month, so rather than doing a straight month to month comparison, I looked for months were the average temperature was as close to the same as possible. Unfortunately this year with our record breaking heat, I didn’t have quite an apples to apples comparison, but I still wanted to share the results of my findings.
You can see that in the first two side by side comparisons where the temperature was almost the same, the energy usage was relatively the same. The final month where our average was 101° we did use more kilowatts, but I think it is still pretty relative to the amount of kilowatts used during a month with an average temperature of 97°. So the short answer to the question of whether or not it’s costing us more to cool our house in the summer because our house is black is, nope. Not really.
Which is a welcome relief, seeing as how we had anticipated an increase and didn’t end up seeing one. But for anyone who might be considering painting their own house a dark color, I wanted to share our experience. I’m sure there are certain factors that would create differences, like how much shade your house gets (we have a lot of mature trees), or what direction it’s facing (ours is facing southwest) , or the quality of your insulation (ours is terrible). But this has been our experience, for what it’s worth.
I hope this was helpful to you, and maybe helps in your house painting decision making. Or, if you were just curious, now you know. That’s all for today friends, have a fabulous day!
