What Asphalt Shingles Are The Best?

The asphalt shingles that are the best being sold in the Eastern United States are from the manufacturer Atlas. The architectural shingle line that is most commonly used being sold by Atlas is their Pinnacle Pristine architectural shingle. The qualities of the shingle that make it stand out from amongst its competitors are:

• The  region of the shingle that represents where the nails are to be installed is a true double layer area of the shingle that is 12/8" or 1 1/2" wide. No other manufacturer has made the area meant to be nailed a larger "double layer". They have all sought other means of claiming a larger area can be nailed, but only making this larger area double layer is meeting the requests of roofers, who for years asked that this be done.
• The vertical face of the Atlas Pinnacle Pristine shingle is 6" tall. All other manufacturers make shingles with 5 5/8" tall faces. Roofers mark chalk lines that are spaced a distance apart that is twice the size of the face. Marking a roof off in 12" increments is easy. Adding by 11 1/4" on a tape measure is much more difficult. Many roofers using these other shingles mark their roofs off in 11" increments, which is technically wrong, and may impact a warranty claim if one needs to be made.
• Atlas brand shingles are the only "Scotchgard" rated shingles in the Eastern United States. This Scotchgard rating extends the warranty against black streaking to 25+ years on their Pinnacle Pristine architectural shingles. The scotchgard rating comes from the company 3M. This is the longest warranty against black streaks at the time of the writing of this article.
• The Atlas shingle is also longer than the other shingle manufacturers products by close to 3". The result is that it takes approximately 8 less shingles to cover 100 square feet of your roof. An average roof of 25 hundred square feet with 5 nails per shingle will have 1000 less nails in it using the same number of nails per shingle. Every nail in a roof can pop and cause a leak, so 40 less nails per 100 square feet of roofing is a good thing.
• The Atlas Pinnacle Pristine shingle is the only architectural shingle in the Eastern United States that has two sealant strips as opposed to one.

The way I would summarize the above is this. The Atlas brand shingle manufacturer has taken the time to ask for and listen to the input of roofers. Manufacturers do not install shingles; roofers do. The opinion of roofers should be taken seriously by shingle manufacturers, but most often this is not the case. The above listed distinctions make the Atlas Pinnacle Pristine architectural shingle the best shingle on the market in the Eastern United States.