Before you put summer out of mind, take 20 minutes to record where your home felt hottest. Note the room, window, time of day and what helped. This small overheating map gives you a clear plan for next year, so you can improve the rooms that need it instead of buying cooling products at random. The timing matters: on 1 September, the Met Office confirmed that summer 2026 was provisionally the UK’s hottest on record, with a mean temperature of 16.5°C.
You do not need technical equipment. A notebook, a rough floor plan and your memory of the hottest spells are enough to start. If you already own a room thermometer, use it to add context rather than treating a single reading as the whole story.
Start with the rooms you actually use
Draw a simple box for each important room. Bedrooms, the living room, a home office and a kitchen deserve priority because discomfort there affects sleep, work and everyday routines. Add arrows for the windows and mark which direction they face if you know it. A phone compass can help, but “morning sun” and “late afternoon sun” are perfectly useful labels.
For every room, answer four questions:
- When did it begin to feel too warm?
- Which window was receiving direct sun?
- Did the room stay warm after sunset?
- What change made a noticeable difference?
Keep the answers brief. “Bedroom, west window, hot from 4pm, still stuffy at bedtime” is more useful than a page of general impressions. It connects the discomfort to a place and time, which is what you need for a practical fix.
Separate sunlight from trapped warm air
Two rooms can feel equally hot for different reasons. One may gain heat through a sunny window, while another stays warm because cooler evening air cannot move through it. Your map should distinguish between the two.
For a sunlit room, mark the hours when light reached the glass and whether closing curtains changed the feel of the space. The Energy Saving Trust advises closing blinds and curtains while the sun is on a window, then opening them after the sun has moved away. Its guidance also says to open windows when the air outside is cooler than inside, often at night, if it is safe to do so.
For a room that stayed warm late, note which windows and internal doors could be opened safely. A top floor flat, a home with windows on only one side, or a room with large unshaded windows can be more prone to overheating, according to the government’s keep cool at home checklist. Renters should record any limits on opening windows or adding external shade before planning changes.
Rank problems before shopping
Now give each room one priority: high, medium or low. A high priority room is one you use often and could not cool comfortably. Medium means the problem was irritating but manageable. Low means the room warmed up only briefly or rarely mattered.
This ranking stops one memorable hot afternoon from dictating the budget. It may show that a single west facing bedroom needs attention more urgently than every window in the house. It may also reveal that a free timing change should be tested before anything is bought.
Match the first response to the evidence:
- Direct sun: test closing existing coverings before sunlight reaches the glass.
- Glare plus heat: check how much light and privacy you still need during the day.
- Warm evenings: plan a safe ventilation route for the hours when outside air is cooler.
- Hot bedtime: combine window timing with the flexible layers in our guide to layering a bed for changeable nights.
- Heat from appliances or chores: move heat producing tasks to cooler hours where practical. If washing is part of the problem, the one room laundry plan can help keep moisture and drying equipment from spreading through the home.
Test your current window coverings first
Before replacing anything, rehearse the routine with what you already own. On the next sunny day, close the covering ahead of direct sunlight, not after the room has warmed. Reopen it once the sun has moved away. Record the result beside the room on your map.
If privacy makes daytime closing awkward, borrow the sightline method from our café curtain privacy test. Stand at the places where privacy matters, then check how much of the window actually needs to be covered. That may point to a lighter, more flexible arrangement rather than keeping a room dark all day.
Where new fabric is justified, measure the window carefully and decide what the covering must do. The wider curtains collection is useful for comparing weights, headings and styles. For bedrooms where reducing light is also important, compare the blackout curtains collection. A label such as blackout describes light control, so do not assume every product will solve every heat issue. Check the individual product details and treat your room notes as the buying brief.
Keep one page for next summer
Finish with a short plan you can find next spring. Write down the top two rooms, the first no cost test for each, any measurements still needed and the latest month by which you want to act. Photograph the page or store it with your household documents.
The aim is not to predict every heatwave. It is to preserve useful evidence while the experience is fresh. When warm weather returns, you will know which window to shade first, when to change the ventilation, and where a purchase could make a genuine difference.