BOSSIER CITY, La. — Even with all of the benefits a metal roof provides, including durability, longevity, recyclability, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, sometimes, it’s still all about the look.

Chadd Hessing purchased a home on Cedar Creek Lake about 90 miles east of Dallas that had been abandoned for more than seven years. Needless to say, it needed a lot of work, inside and out, including a new metal roof.

“It’s a lake home, so we wanted a clean, crisp look,” says Hessing. “It’s an all-black home: black walls, black windows and black roof with Cyprus soffits. We considered some other roofing products, but incrementally, it wasn’t that much more to go with this roofing system.”

For GreenLeaf Roofing of Plano, Texas, it was a relatively straight-forward job. GreenLeaf owns a New Tech Machinery roof panel roll former and produces its own panels with coil from McElroy Metal: a 1-3/4-inch standing seam roofing panel, similar to McElroy's Medallion-Lok. The panels for this home were formed from a 24-gauge, 21-inch coil, coated in Sherwin-Williams Fluropon PVDF Black Matte. The longest panel was 23 feet.

The homeowners wanted a flat pan, with no ribs or striations, so Andrew Ziegenfelder, senior project coordinator for GreenLeaf, convinced them that a narrower pan would decrease the chance of any visible oil canning. That’s why he used 21-inch coil, leaving a 15-inch pan.

Ziegenfelder says the GreenLeaf crew set up the roll former in the adjacent vacant lot, ran the panels, bundled them up and stacked them near the house. The roof, approximately 2,300 square feet with the house and garage, was installed in two days.

“The only unique request on this roof was to install the first panel along the second story wall so the siding could be installed over our sidewall flashing detail,” Ziegenfelder says. “When the siding was completed, we came back to finish the roofing.”

Charlie Teague, the general contractor and co-owner of RC Pride Restoration in Allen, Texas, has seen more and more houses with metal roofing on Cedar Creek Lake, about 90 miles east of Dallas.

“I’d say about 25% of the houses on the lake have metal roofing, but most of it is R-panels,” he says. “There are a couple with standing seam, but none of them look as good as ours. The owners wanted a standing seam roof for the aesthetics, more than anything. They wanted a clean look, no shingle lines.

“We pretty much gutted this one right down to the studs,” Teague says. “I think it looks great and the roof is a big part of that.”