Flat plate solar collectors are of black appearance because of the color of the absorber, which is employed to maximize the absorption of solar spectrum. Generally, to avoid the monotony of the black color we can use collectors with absorbers of blue, red-brown, green or other color. These collectors are of lower thermal efficiency than that of the usual black type collectors, because of the lower collector absorptance, but they are of more interest to architects for applications on traditional or modern buildings. In this paper, applications of solar collectors with colored absorbers in a large hot water system suitable for multi-flat residential or office buildings, a house heating system, and an industrial process heat system are presented. The collectors are analyzed with respect to their performance and practical applications, aiming to give guidelines for their wider use on buildings. These systems are simulated on an annual basis at three different locations at different latitudes, Nicosia, Cyprus (35 degrees), Athens, Greece (38 degrees) and Madison, Wisconsin (43 degrees). All simulations are carried out with TRNSYS. The results show that although the colored collectors present lower efficiency than the typical black type collectors, the difference in energy output depends on the absorber darkness. For a medium value of the coefficient of absorptance (alpha = 0.85), the colored collectors give satisfactory results regarding the drop of the amount of collected energy for the three locations (about 7-18%), compared to collectors with black absorbers (alpha = 0.95). This implies the use of proportionate larger collector aperture area to have the same energy output as that of typical black colored collectors. Additionally, the economic figures obtained for the systems investigated are very promising. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.