Rainwater harvesting (RWH) is a method of capturing rainfall from a catchment surface and storing it for later use. Though it has been around for thousands of years, its popularity and use has been increasing in recent years and water quality within RWH systems has become a concern. Water temperature is a parameter that affects water quality, and storage container color and shading affect this temperature. Rainwater storage containers with four different colors kept at three different shadings were used to study the effects of shading and container color on water temperature. Temperatures of water stored in these containers were monitored over 20 weeks during a Texas summer Statistical analyses showed that the color and shade variables had an interaction and thus both together had an effect on the water temperature. Because of this, individual treatment variables could not be analyzed and compared statistically. However, the trends showed that light colors and higher shading caused lower water temperatures in the storage containers. Also, the color had more pronounced effect than shading on water temperature inside the containers.