With the summer months upon us, keeping ourselves cool is the most obvious thing to do and our first goal is to cool our home effectively. If you are guaranteed a warm summer with heat, sun, and humidity, it marks the beginning of the cooling season. Home cooling does not mean turning up the air conditioning if you acquire one in your home and letting your energy bill skyrocket. Here are some simple tips to cool your home down, make you and your home more comfortable, and cool off without spending a fortune.

Keep your Blinds Closed

The sun shines through your home throughout the day, especially during longer daylight hours and intense heat of summer. By closing your blinds or curtains, this can help deflect sunlight and keep the heat out. This can also help to reduce heat gain by around 45 percent in recent studies. 30% of heat that is not wanted comes from windows, shades, and curtains. You can save you up to 7% on bills by closing your blinds and you can reduce your indoor temperatures by up to 20 degrees. The best investment you could install are blackout blinds as it completely blocks the sunlight. If you are finding the room too dark, you should only close blinds in the rooms that you are using.

Invest in a Proper Fan

With the many types of fans to buy on the market, some may be better and perform better than others. Here are some fans that are available to choose from:

• Room Fans: Position a room Fan in a place where you will get maximum air circulation.
• Ceiling Fans: Ceiling Fans (Peddle Fans) are a very popular version and can help cool down a room in your home. They can also be costly to run and a bit ineffective in very hot weather. One advantage they have is that they consist of a reversible motor. You can control the direction of the blades, you can pull colder air up in the summer and push warm air down in the winter.
• Whole House Fans: The whole house fan is the most popular, effective, low-cost cooling system for your home. These are larger fans and can be mounted to the ceiling. They perform by drawing air from the open windows in the house, into the attic, where it is then realised through large vents to the exterior of the house. When the temperature drops at night, it will automatically switch off.

Focus on regulating your body temperature better

Some tips to regulate and cool your body temperature are as follows:


• Stay hydrated by drinking a lot of cooled iced water.
• Cool your skin with a cold face cloth placing on your neck, feet, and forehead.
• Take cooler showers. Shower in the late afternoon or evening time rather than the morning time.
• Wear lighter clothing around the house.
• Eat colder foods rather than hot. Things like smoothies, salads, fruit, etc. This will help keep the temperatures a bit lower than normal. Eat ice cream also. Avoiding the oven or grill as this will heat up your home.
• If you happen to feel a bit warmer at night, have a bowl of cold water ready to dip your feet into.

Sleep Low

If you have a home with a staircase and you may sleep upstairs, heat rises so it is best if you sleep downstairs. Bring your mattress downstairs into your living room or another room you may have and sleep on the floor, this way the air will have a lower temperature and you will feel a lot cooler in the summertime. Wear breathable clothing in bed and change your bed sheets to lighter ones, this will help lower the temperatures as you sleep.

Open all Windows in your home

Open all windows in the house during the day to let the air circulate through and around the house. The air is always cooler at night so keeping your windows open is always the best option. The upper floor of your home is always going to be warmer as the heat rises, so it is suggested to open all top windows especially as the cooler air at night will be taken in, thus, cooling your home.

Use Energy Efficient Light Bulbs

On hotter days and in summer the energy costs can become increased as energy is being used by fans, etc. Turn off your lights if they are not needed and electronics. Switch from incandescent lights compact fluorescent lamps or to CFL's. These bulbs can waste around 90% of their energy in the heat they emit. Changing to a different bulb will make a small difference in the cooling of your home and reducing your energy bills significantly.

Cook outside instead of inside

Avoid an oven or stove for cooking as this will only increase the heat in your home. Make cold foods like salads, sandwiches, etc as these are a better option in the warmer weather. Another tip would be to cook outside on a BBQ or invest in an easy solar oven for outdoors. You may as well enjoy the fine sunny weather while it's around. So now its time to make some of these adjustments to cool your home and save yourself some money on energy bills at the same time.

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