There is nothing better than a warm, sunny day. The summer months mean the chance to head to the beach, enjoy ice cream and soak up some sunshine. However, hot weather isn’t always all good news.
As the temperatures rise outside, the higher they rise inside too. We’ve all experienced those (sticky) hot nights, tossing and turning and generally feeling uncomfortable. During those sleep-deprived nights, you might often find yourself wondering how to cool a room down or even what the best cooling fans for rooms are.
Not all of us have air conditioning
If you are lucky enough to have a full air conditioning system throughout your house (a rarity in the UK), then you might already have the tools to keep a room cool. But if you don’t have the luxury of air conditioning, then when a heatwave strikes you could find yourself in a house filled with unbearably hot air.
How can you cool down a room fast?
Luckily, there are a number of ways to cool a room down fast, including:
- Encouraging the air to flow
- Avoiding the use of appliances that generate heat
- Letting cool air in during the night
- Blocking out the sunlight during the daytime
- Adjusting your fans
- Shutting off unused spaces
- Turning off incandescent lights
- Investing in air conditioning or fans
- Combining ice and fans
Many of these methods take only a few minutes and will be a real saviour when the temperatures begin to rise.
Encourage the air to flow
Many people think opening a window and letting it do its thing is a simple solution to the issue. While allowing the fresh air inside is good, it often won’t be that effective in changing the temperature of the room quickly.
Instead, open two windows that are in line with each other, or at least at opposite ends of the room or your home, this will encourage the air to flow freely through and create a nice breeze.
If you want to know how to cool a room down even more by encouraging airflow, then put a fan in front of each of these windows:
- Set one in one window facing into your room, which will blow in the air from outside.
- On the second window, place another fan facing outside which will blow the hot air from your room back outside.
Avoid using appliances that generate heat
Almost all electrical appliances will emit a small amount of heat when they’re in use, which can be unhelpful when trying to cool a room down. Small electrical appliances won’t produce enough heat to make a big difference to the room temperature, but there are some appliances that have the sole purpose of generating heat.
These include appliances such as:
- Oven
- Microwave
- Tumble dryer
- Even your hairdryer!
All of these electricals can kick off a lot of heat, so trying to avoid their use during warmer weather can really help keep your home cool.
Instead, swap your tumble dryer for an indoor drying rack, and change your cooked meals for a delicious and refreshing salad or meal that involves no cooking.
Let cool air in during the night
If you are wondering how to keep cool at night, one of the most effective tricks is to open your curtains and windows while the sun is down. Once the sun has set, the outside temperature will drop, and you can use this to cool your home.
Open the windows as far as they’ll go. For houses with double-hung windows, check if the top sashes open as well, as they often do.
Block out the sunlight during the daytime
On a nice sunny day, we naturally want to open our curtains and enjoy the lovely weather. However, this is very counterintuitive when you are thinking about how to keep a room cool. The hot temperatures from outside will be allowed in through the windows, and the glass can even magnify this heat – making your room hotter.
If you want to cool a room, you should keep curtains shut during the daytime, this will block out the direct sunlight and heat.
Cooling hack: If your curtains are thin and not effective at blocking out the sunlight, then draping thick and soft materials such as bed covers over the windows can work very well as an easy alternative.
Adjust your fans
Whether you have a ceiling fan or a freestanding one in your room, ensuring it’s set up correctly and is readjusted if needed can be an easy way to keep a room cool.
Make sure your fans are set to anti-clockwise!
During the summer the last thing you want is to distribute the warm air, so you should readjust your fans to run anti-clockwise in hot weather. The majority of ceiling fans will have a little switch on the side somewhere, which will switch the direction and allow you to spread cool air, not warm air.
Random fact: Smart energy users will have been using their fans throughout the winter too as a way to encourage warm air distribution. During colder weather, a ceiling fan is most effective in the clockwise setting as it is better at distributing warm air.
Shut off unused spaces
If you have some rooms in your home that you don’t use often, they can have a big impact on the overall temperature. Having many unused rooms will store more heat and waft it between the various rooms in your home.
Avoid this by closing off all unused bedrooms and keeping as many doors as you can shut during the day. That way you can focus on only cooling the rooms that you need, and it’ll work faster too, now that you won’t have any other unused rooms stealing your hard-earned cool air!
Turn off incandescent lights
Some types of lighting, particularly incandescent lights, give off a large amount of heat. Swapping these types of lights for LED lighting will have a significant impact on cooling your home down during the summer. If you can’t replace your current lighting, then try to avoid turning those lights on when the weather is particularly hot.
If you need the lights on as you have the curtains shut to block out the heat from the sun, then try smaller lamps with LED bulbs to keep the temperature to a minimum.
Invest in air conditioning or fans
When it comes to cooling a room down, one of the most effective methods is an air conditioning unit or one of the top cooling fans.
Air conditioning is not always a cheap solution, but there are relatively inexpensive and easy-to-install options in the form of window air conditioning units. Plus you’ll have this solution for those other hot days in the years to come!
These window units are considered more eco-friendly than a full air conditioning unit as they only cool down one main room in your home as opposed to the entire building. Many of the best cooling fans for rooms are also budget-friendly and can make a big difference in cooling a room down quickly and efficiently.
Combine ice and fans
One final way to cool a room down is to use ice alongside your fans. It might look like a strange solution, but it can be very effective for cooling the air quickly. Position a shallow bowl of ice, ice packs or a frozen hot water bottle behind your fan, and it will soon spread the cool temperatures around your room.
How to keep cool at night
As well as opening your windows once the sun has set, there are a few other tips for how to keep cool at night.
- As heat rises, one easy way to cool your sleeping area is to lower it as much as possible. This could mean moving your mattress to the floor or sleeping in a lower room in your home.
- Invest in some equipment to keep you cooler, such as a cooling fan for your room and a cooling pillow. A cooling pillow is designed to draw the heat away from your head area, and in turn, will keep your whole body cooler.
- A gel cooling pack, or even a frozen hot water bottle, in your bed will work wonders to keep you cool.
- Mimic the fan and ice technique mentioned above with a small fan on your bedside table and a spray bottle of chilled water.
- Sleep with lightweight covers and 100 percent cotton sheets during the summer to keep the heat at bay.
We hope that this has given you some useful information that will help to keep you and your home cool when the weather is hot. Don’t forget to stay hydrated!
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