Reflective coating applied to building envelopes are becoming increasingly important because of their benefits in terms of internal cooling and energy savings. Because of their optical properties, reflective materials stay cooler than standard materials under the same conditions; therefore, they are also known as cool materials. This paper presents a review on the application of reflective materials on buildings’ walls, fenestration and roof. The thermal performance of these materials has been analyzed using different methodologies. Thus, the reported studies can be classified into five categories: envelope components, test cells, computational fluid dynamics, building simulation, monitored buildings,. The paper describes the results obtained by means of these methodologies, the main characteristics of the models and, when available, the optical properties of the standard and cool materials. The temperature of cities continues to increase because of the heat island phenomenon due to undeniable climatic change. The observed high building temperatures intensify the energy problem in buildings, deteriorates thermal comfort conditions, and increases cooling load. To counterbalance the phenomenon, important mitigation technologies have been developed and proposed. Among them, technologies aiming to increase the albedo of cities and use of insulators appear to be very promising, presenting relatively high building temperature mitigation potential. This paper aims to present the affect of, when applied in the building, the reduction in temperature was found up to 12⁰C and 40% saving in energy were achieved.
