Solar Panels and Home Aesthetics: Finding the Right Balance
Installing home solar panels might seem like an eyesore to some homeowners. Nonetheless, according to the people over at solar company Vivint Solar, with careful consideration of aesthetic factors and the latest solar technologiesit is possible to seamlessly incorporate solar into your home’s current style and aesthetics.
Evaluating Your Home
The first step is evaluating the aesthetic elements of your home to work out the best locations for solar arrays. Consider the shapes and angles of your roof along with gables, dormers, and other distinctive features. A low-profile solar design that follows the existing geometry can appear almost invisible from the street. Likewise, panels mounted flush on rear-facing or tucked away garage roofs draw far less attention. If options exist, choose sections minimally visible to preserve outward facing architectural fronts.
Blending Color Palettes
Most solar panels today have blue or black color hues that can often match, or provide a pleasing contrast with, roof tiles and exterior paint schemes. Keeping solar panel colors consistent with the home’s overall color palette helps them blend in naturally. Even all-black panels tend to fade into shaded areas of roof backgrounds. For homes with red, brown, and other color roofing, blue solar panel variants complement better than black. Module color options are expanding rapidly as solar aesthetic needs evolve.
Minimizing Visual Scale
Larger solar arrays of course capture more energy but can potentially overwhelm the size and geometry of certain roof planes and facades. Breaking up solar coverage into multiple sub-groupings helps reduce the visual scale while increasingyields from multiple angles of sun exposure. Long rows of unbroken solar panels often stand out disproportionately. Choosing microinverters over central string inverters further enables this distributed modular approach.
Panel & Roof Contrasts
Glossy solar modules will contrast more noticeably with flatter roof finishes. Fortunately, matte coatings greatly reduce glare and reflection for minimally visible integration – especially helpful against shingles. Glass-free solar laminates installed flush to the roof plane also test almost invisibly since light absorption eliminates reflection.
Other Rooftop Equipment
Solar arrays naturally divert attention from other rooftop appendages like vents, chimneys, antennas, and skylights that would otherwise catch the eye. Clustering solar installations near these existing elements helps balance outbuilding aesthetics. Sandwiching solar arrays between protruding dormers similarly conceals them while synchronizing with facades.
Ground Mounts
Solar need not be confined just to rooftops. Ground-mounted arrays, elevated on poles or built into south-facing hillsides, preserve all roof aesthetics completely. Newer horizontal single-axis tracking mounts stretch flush in narrow profiles hugging the earth. While saving usable backyard space, they generate up to 25% more energy.
Financial Tradeoffs
If aesthetic concessions prove too compromising, remember larger unbroken solar arrays return higher financial yields over time. Projecting future savings helps justify panels that may initially override perfect architectural harmony. Regardless, home value itself tends to rise with solar installations as prospective buyers appreciate self-generating renewable energy.
Conclusion
Finding the right balance with home solar ultimately depends on the homeowner’s priorities and preferences. With careful planning and the latest solar technologies, it is often possible to incorporate panels fairly seamlessly. Factors like roof color contrasts, distributed scale, and proximity to existing rooftop structures can go a long way in minimizing visual discordance. However, maximizing energy production may sometimes override perfect aesthetic harmony initially.
Homeowners need to weigh financial payoffs down the road against immediate curb appeal tradeoffs. Fortunately, solar technology improvements paired with adequate foresight into panel positioning can deliver substantial energy savings without undue aesthetic sacrifice. And as solar power advances, more viable and creative installation options will likely emerge to fulfill both form and function.
