Stay Cool During the Summer Months

When it comes to ways to stay cool in hot weather, I’ve had about a decade’s worth of experience living in a hot apartment with shoddy air conditioning and greater than 100°F weather days, forcing me to learn how to effectively stay cool. For staying cool in hot weather, there are many obvious and common sense solutions, and also some not-so-obvious tips and tricks. I will include both in this article.

Fans

Fans are one of the most popular solutions utilized when figuring out how to cool down or how to make a room cooler. Fans can work in two ways: they can push colder air closer to you or they can help you cool off by evaporating water on your skin.

Air Circulation

The trick to evaporative cooling is to draw heat away from your body through the dissipation of and the movement of water away from your skin. If you’ve ever exited the pool and a slight breeze made you shiver then you’ve experienced evaporative cooling. To maximize this, try to create air circulation in your dwelling. This is one of the main ways how to cool down a room and yourself since this will possibly prevent cooler air from settling to the floor and keep a light breeze freely moving against your skin, helping evaporate any of your sweat. I usually have multiple fans set up to create a kind of ‘vortex’ or cyclone in enclosed spaces to maximize the air movement.

Placement

To move colder air closer to you, it’s best to put fans low or next to a source of cold air and then face the fans towards you. It tends to be cooler on the ground, so putting the fans lower and aiming them upward can help by making the fan blow the colder air onto you.

Dampness

No matter where you live, a spray bottle and a fan will help you perform evaporative cooling. The spray bottle helps by imitating sweating and then the fan maximizes the evaporates the water for you. If you live in a drier environment or area, then consider getting a swamp cooler. A swamp cooler is basically a larger version of the spray bottle and can significantly help you and your room stay cool if you live in an area that isn’t very humid. Swamp coolers are sometimes so effective that they can make home AC (air-conditioning) irrelevant. If you’d like some low budget solutions, try checking out this video of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) swamp coolers.

Fabrics

Clothing

Dress sparsely whenever possible. If you wear anything, make it lighter colored, as this reflects light and heat away from you. If you have to dress up, try to use breathable fabrics. For example, wearing something made out of cotton or silk will help ensure your sweat evaporates instead of pools under your clothing.

Bedding

Sleep in as light of a bedding as possible. For example, most summer nights I only sleep with a sheet covering me and I tend to keep the back of my neck, my hands and my feet uncovered. Keeping those body parts uncovered is important, as heat evaporates best from your feet, hands and neck. I have also had success with comforters that are colored differently on both sides. Since darker colors absorb heat and lighter colors reflect heat, I would face the darker side of the comforter towards my body and the lighter side away from me.

You could also consider getting a different mattress, pillow or covers to replace them with something more breathable. There are products that advertise themselves as having better temperature management in hot weather, if you’re willing to make the purchase.

Time

Morning

When you wake up, you are probably already fighting the heat outside in an effort of keeping your room cool. Where I live, the temperature reaches its peak around 6 PM and its lowest at 4 AM. In order to make a room cooler, I keep a fan pushing air from outside into it until 10-11 AM and then I will turn off the fan and close blinds and windows to keep any heat from entering.

Day

The most effective way of handling midday hot weather is to manage the entrance of light and sunshine. If you have a closed window because of an air conditioner, you will also want to close your curtains. And, even if you have no source of cold air, closing your windows is still only a good idea if your curtains are also closed. The reason is, if your curtains are open, then keeping your window open is needed to prevent your window from acting as a greenhouse. Any method of limiting light entering through windows will have some positive effect on keeping your place cool.

Night

In the evening, or when you go to bed, the best way how to cool down a room is to open your windows so colder air can enter. I usually have a fan pushing colder outside air into my room after 8 PM. If you live in a noisy urban area and you’re worried about the sound, still consider giving it a try since fans do a fairly good job of masking sounds from outside.

Body

Hydration

Make sure to keep hydrated. Sometimes you aren’t sweating because you don’t have enough water, not because you’re actually staying cool. Keep up with electrolyte intake as well, as electrolytes are needed for you to perspire properly.

Active

If you’re doing something active then keep your hands, forearms, feet and neck as free of clothing as possible, as that is where your body gives off the most heat. Being barefoot inside and wearing light shoes or sandals outside is also a good idea, as your feet can perspire and help cool you down.

Sleeping

When going to bed, I suggest keeping your extremities out of your blankets/coverings for extra cooling. Sometimes, if I am desperately hot, I’ll use an ice pack on the back of my neck and sleep with it there. To do this, keep ice packs in your freezer to place on your pillow during the night. If you want some extra cooling, dampen the towel that’s holding the ice pack. How damp you make it is a matter of preference (I prefer a light sprinkling on either side), but be careful not to give yourself frost bite.

Aquatics

Probably one of the most performed, going swimming or even submerging yourself in colder water can help you cool off. If you can’t go to a pool or other body of water, you could try a cool bath or shower. If that doesn’t appeal to you, then consider running your hands, arms and wrists under cool water – or even a cold foot bath.

Technology

Air Conditioning

If you don’t have it, air conditioning will definitely help you stay cool.  Air conditioning is another popular solution for how to cool down a room. Unfortunately, air conditioning can also be expensive, so instead of putting on a larger home AC, consider getting a smaller and more efficient one for the areas you spend most of your time (e.g. your office) or instead just implementing the other tips in this article.

If you have the home AC on, it would be a good idea to close your windows and curtains as much as is bearable so you can minimize the hot air coming in. This will save you electricity costs. If available with your particular home AC, you can also close off the vents to the rooms you don’t use or don’t need to remain cool. For example, I close the vent to the bathroom since I don’t need it to stay cool in there.

Lighting

Traditional light bulbs can put out a lot of heat, especially in smaller spaces. Try to get energy saving light bulbs that are either low or controlled wattage, as they will put out less heat.

Appliances

Appliances of every sort usually put out heat since they need to keep their electronics cool. Minimizing electronic appliance usage can sometimes have a significant impact. Just an old monitor or TV can raise the temperature of small spaces by a couple of degrees. A counter-intuitive and somewhat expensive solution is upgrading your electronics. This includes home PCs and graphics cards or processors. Upgrading technology to their latest and more powerful versions can usually decrease heat output because of their more energy efficient technology.