The
colour of the roof
of a building or building part.
Mostly used for 3D building visualization. Note, that the interpretation of colour names differs between different 3D rendering applications.
It should be used together with the
building
=*
or
building:part
=*
tag.
Tagging
The colour should be given in hexadecimal, preceded by a # sign, e.g.
#FFFFFF
You can use a descriptive name for the basic colours, e.g.
white
red
. However, the interpretation of the colour given in this form may vary among different 3D renderers.
Example values
Popular roof types
Description
Colour
Photo
Tile, brick-red colour
#E96B39
tar paper roof, grey colour,
flat roofs often have this colour
#808080
copper roof, patina-covered
#6EBE9F
crimson
#DC143C
graphite
#36454F
rosewood
#532F28
green roof
#469536
most often used values in database
Most commonly used values from
Taginfo
colour
roof:colour=
description
grey
grey
red
red
black
black
#999999
silver
brown
brown
#bbad8e
beige
white
sometimes on hospitals and industrial buildings
maroon
may be used for coloured brick rooftiles
silver
lightgrey
darkgrey
green
blue
Tips
It is not always easy to choose a colour from a photo. Photos are of varying quality and colours can look different in different photos.
Colour differences of the same building in different photos
Colour differences of the same building at different hours
Early in the morning (too much yellow colour)
Sunny noon (too strong contrasts)
Late morning, light overcast
Beware of optical illusions – a colour in contrast with other colours can look different than it does on its own. Examples:
Both the yellow dots and the backgrounds of the fields on which they are located have identical colours.
The two small squares are exactly the same colour, but the right one looks darker.
Instead of this tag, you can use
building:material
=*
, based on which 3D renderers often assign a colour.
Colour selection tools
See also
Possible tagging mistakes
roof:colour=gray
‒ The right value would be grey because OSM uses British spelling.