If GAF Timberline Solar is what led you here, you are already asking the right question. You want a roof that generates power without looking like it generates power. Timberline Solar is a shingle built with that goal in mind. The Icon tile, installed by Sternholt, is a different category of product built around the same goal, taken further.
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Timberline Solar
What a Solar Shingle Actually Looks Like
Timberline Solar is a real product doing a real job, a shingle with a solar cell built in, nailed to the deck the same way the rest of the roof is installed. It is a step up from a standard rack mounted solar panel, and for a homeowner replacing a shingle roof who wants a modest solar addition, it is a sensible choice.
But it does not blend in, and not just up close. The solar shingles sit visibly distinct from the standard shingles around them, thicker, darker, and differently textured, closer in appearance to a rubber mat laid over an asphalt field than to a uniform roof surface. From the street, from a car, from a neighbor's driveway, the eye finds the seam immediately. That is not a flaw in GAF's execution. It is the nature of building a solar product on top of a shingle platform rather than building the roofing material itself to generate power.
What the Icon Tile Is
Sternholt installs the Icon tile, a solarized concrete roof tile manufactured on a Westlake Royal Building Products substrate, the standard manufacturer for concrete and slate roof tile in premium and high end residential construction. The solar cell is not added to the tile after the fact. It is cast into the material during manufacturing, the same way the tile's color, texture, and profile are. There is no active section and inactive section, no seam to find. The tile is the roof.
That difference shows up in the numbers, not just the look. Higher cell efficiency, more power per roofing square, and a wind rating fifty miles per hour beyond Timberline Solar's, on top of roofing performance rated to match. This is architecture that happens to generate electricity, not a solar product wearing a roofing shape. Invisible Solar Power, in the literal sense.
See what it looks like on a home like yoursWhy the Difference Matters Over Time
A roof is not a purchase most homeowners revisit every few years. It is a thirty year decision, and the Icon tile is warrantied as one, thirty years on the roof itself and twenty five years on power production. That timeline changes how the comparison should actually be judged. A solar shingle that saves money on installation today but reads as a visibly separate solar product for the life of the roof is a decision a homeowner lives with on every drive up to their own house, for decades. The Icon tile is priced and built for homeowners who have already decided that tradeoff is not one worth making.
The return on a roof like this is not measured only in electricity offset, though the numbers are strong on that front too, with higher wattage per square than a comparable shingle system. It is measured in a roof that never needs a second decision. Westlake Royal concrete tile is already the material high end builders and architects specify when a roof needs to last as long as the house does, with a weight, profile, and permanence that asphalt and composite shingle systems are not built to match. Adding power generation to that same material, rather than to a shingle designed for a faster replacement cycle, is why estate level homes and the architects who design them increasingly specify tile roofing before solar ever enters the conversation, and why Sternholt's work sits inside that category rather than alongside consumer solar retrofits.
Who This Is For
Timberline Solar and the Icon tile are answering different budgets and different standards, not competing for the same buyer. If installer availability and a standard shingle replacement matter most, Timberline Solar is a reasonable path. If the finished look of the roof cannot be compromised, and the home calls for a material built to match its architecture and its lifespan rather than one adapted to accommodate solar, that is what the Icon tile is for.
We serve Bergen County, Westchester, the Hamptons, and comparable communities across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.
Sternholt installs the Icon tile, a Westlake Royal concrete roof tile with solar generation built into the material, across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.