Among our most beautiful metal roofing systems are our pre-aged copper tiles, shingles, and diamonds. While there are a myriad of “fake” aged copper finishes now coming onto the market, you know if you’ve read many of my previous posts on the topic that my problem with them all is that they are just completely too regular to be convincing. One of the features of actual copper, whether naturally or artificially aged, is that it’s just so irregular. Copper doesn’t age consistently over an entire roof, because trees, exposure, prevailing winds, and drainage patterns all impact the way a roof “sees” the weather and all of these elements affect the rate of patina of any given section of roof. One of the things we try to do when we artificially age copper roofing is to vary the amount of the acid that gets applied to different sections or even individual tiles. This helps accelerate the variability that will come naturally to a copper roof over time.