Sun stoppers: seven ways to keep your home cool this summer
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- Tom Greenhill, engineer and author of the Heatwave Toolkit website, says shading fitted outside the glass can reject up to about three times more solar heat than an equivalent blind fitted inside, warning that air conditioning 'will cool the privileged but will not work for the many — or the environment.'
- Velux sells an £80 manual external awning blind that Greenhill says cooled his Victorian loft within 30 minutes of DIY installation; the company's anti-heat blackout shutters claim to reduce indoor temperatures by up to 5°C and cost £530 plus £166 for electric control.
- A £5 Ikea Bärglim king-size fitted sheet draped over skylights cut Bojana Bajzelj's ground-floor extension temperature by an estimated 2°C to 4°C while still letting daylight through.
- After neighbours with a baby were hospitalized with heat-related illness during the June heatwave, Shaded's £89 clip-on mini awnings sold out and are now offering 10% off restocked purchases of two or more.
- Caribbean Blinds, the UK's biggest external shading manufacturer, quotes £3,000–£4,000 for external roller blinds on average bifold doors and £4,000–£6,000 for awnings, with VP Stuart Dantzic noting a £250 weather sensor lets blinds 'do what they need to, when they need to.'
- Scottish Shutter Company prices interior wooden shutters from £550 for a typical 1.2m by 1.4m living-room window, £1,100 for external roller shutters, and £1,450 for external aluminium shutters — the last chosen only when windows won't accommodate recessed fittings.
Why it matters: UK housing stock was designed to retain heat, not shed it, leaving households to choose between expensive external shading (£3,000–£6,000 for bifold doors) and cheap DIY fixes like £5 Ikea sheets or £20 Amazon solar sails before the next heatwave. Experts frame the cooling gap as a climate equity issue as UK summers intensify beyond traditional design assumptions.
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