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In recent years there has been a widespread adoption of high reflectance (cool) roofing materials in hot climates to reduce a building's cooling load and energy use. While a cool roof can reduce the building's cooling load during warm months, it may regrettably increase the heating load in cool months thus reducing their overall effectiveness. One potential solution to preserving high cooling load savings without accruing a large heating load penalty is to implement a switchable roof reflectance technology; allowing a low reflectance roof during the heating season and a high reflectance roof during the cooling season. This paper organizes and summarizes the literature on cool roofs and switchable roofing materials as a tool for energy savings in buildings. It presents a review of material properties and advancements, energy savings and penalties, current codes, additional benefits and limitations, and recommendations for future research. Finally, the paper summarizes comparative analysis results of the energy performance for both static and switchable cool roofs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]