Create a Custom Color Slate Roof with North Country Slate

Slate roof tiles can be used to create custom patterns by blending colors in order to design a custom color slate roof. North Country Slate offers design suggestions on color, size, thickness and installation techniques, which will produce a spectacular custom roof.

North Country slate colors that are popularly used in custom roofs include Unfading Purple, Unfading Green, Mottled Purple and Green, Semi-Weathering Gray-Black, and Semi-Weathering Gray-Green.

Slate roof higher education

Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario chose a custom slate tile roof for their multi-use building—Mitchell Hall, which was completed in 2019 and named after Queen’s University engineering alumnus, Bruce Mitchell, who had made a sizeable donation towards the project in 2018.

The building sits on land where the university’s Physical Education Centre (PEC)—which was built in 1931—and the Jock Harty Arena once stood. The arena was demolished in 2009 and the PEC was demolished in 2016.

Mitchell Hall houses programs designed to further integrate health care and wellness, as well as AI (artificial intelligence) and HMC (human-machine collaboration). The university says the hall “is all about new approaches and creativity”. The hall includes three gymnasiums, a high-performance varsity training center, a health promotion hub, an interfaith room, an innovation hub, and the campus’s first examination center.

Mitchell Hall uses pieces of the PEC building, such as a gym wall, some repurposed ceiling material, and the heritage facade. The new building appears very modern while still playing homage to the past.

Slate roof tiles are similar. Their use today is a throwback to centuries of slate roofing. Yet slate tiles can also look modern or even timeless. 

Slate shingles provide custom look

The university chose a multi-colored blend consisting of both unfading and semi-weathering slate. By combining colors, this custom roof provides a unique design that combines timeless and traditional elements.

The slate roof is a mixture of North Country Slate colors: Semi-Weathering Grey-Black, Semi-Weathering Green, Unfading Green, Unfading Purple, and Mottled Purple and Green.

• North Country Semi-Weathering Gray/Black (also called Strata Gray) is composed of differing shades of gray with numerous inclusions of black and dark gray.
• North Country Semi-Weathering Gray/Green (also called Sea Green) provides a primary background color of green, as well as moderate color and texture variations.
• North Country Unfading Green is one of the most popular slate roof tiles, because it can be used alone or as one of the blended colors used on multi-colored roofs.
• North Country Unfading Purple reveals tones of burgundy with frequent minor inclusions of green. These roofing slates can also easily be blended with other slate colors to create multi-colored roofs. For this reason, they’re a favorite among architects and owners who want multicolored roofs.
• North Country Unfading Mottled Purple and Green consists of varying shades of burgundy with frequent clouds or inclusions of green. It provides subtle color and texture variations on roofs when combined with another color.

A percentage of the North Country Semi-Weathering Green slate and a smaller percentage of the North Country Semi-Weathering Gray/Black will weather to tones of brown and buff over time. So the roof will change color as it ages. Consider this effect when planning your slate roof.

All of these slates are quarried from a producer in Vermont, USA, and they meet or exceed the requirements of ASTM as an S-1 rated roofing slate.

North Country Slate, located in Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada, is a trusted supplier of quality slate products. Contact North Country Slate to inquire about replacing your shingles with slate shingles.