An extension of the home, a sunroom is the perfect place to gather friends and family, to tend to your beloved houseplants or to just get some alone time — while embracing the ever so abundant sunshine. A stylish addition to the home, sunrooms offer a space where you can zone out and be one with nature.
Sunrooms capture light into a space beautifully, but the one downside of this area is it can get quite hot during the summer months if it's not properly ventilated. So how do you cool down a sunroom? Asif Bux, an electrician from heating and cooling firm Comfort Union says: 'A sunroom can serve multiple purposes, such as a lounge area, home office, or dining space, providing a flexible area that adapts to various needs. It also offers a seamless connection to the outdoors, allowing homeowners to enjoy natural views and fresh air without being exposed to the elements'.
Sunrooms can be quite the challenge if you're dealing with the heat, so what would be the best way to cool down a room in order to get the most out of your space? Here is everything you need to know — according to experts.
How do you cool down a sunroom that's overheating?
Knowing how to cool down a room, will allow you to get the best out of your sunroom and give you the time to enjoy the luscious light that seeps through those windows and doors.
Alexander Ruggie from ASAP Restoration LLC says: 'The biggest benefit of having a sunroom is the amount of light that it can bring into a home. There isn’t anything like natural light when it comes to making a space feel right, and a sunroom provides a lot of it'.
So, as you get ready to embrace your sunroom during the summer heat, here are a few ways you can keep it cool.
1. Install blinds, drapes or curtains
The best way to keep the heat out if by shading your sunroom when you can. Alexander Ruggie from ASAP Restoration LLC tells us: 'Windows get hot when the sun pours through them. Fortunately it’s easy to block with some drapes, curtains, blinds, or even reflective film like you’d place on car windows for privacy'.
The expert says these methods is ideal for keeping sunlight and heat from entering your space. If your sunroom furniture is not UV protected, then adding shade into your space will help protect it.
2. Add a ceiling fan into your sunroom
Decorating a ceiling with a fan doesn't necessarily mean an eyesore — this stylish and sleek Loritta 52'' Ceiling Fan With Led Lights And Remote Control from Wayfair. It's also a great way to cool down your sunroom as it is the most effective way of welcoming air circulation into a space.
Alexander tells us: 'Circulation is one of the most effective ways to cool air in a normally stagnant space, and ceiling fans are fantastic at getting large volumes of air moving fast. While a ceiling fan doesn’t actually cool the air per se, it does create a windchill effect that cuts away the feeling of overwhelming stagnant heat'.
3. Ensure There's Ventilation
Another way of cooling a sunroom is by installing an exhaust fan, like this iPower Shutter Exhaust Fan from Wayfair.
'Using an exhaust fan to eject any warm air from a room can help a lot to keep the space cooler,' says Alexander. 'Sunrooms are a fantastic way to open a home up with light, but that light brings with it a lot of heat. Ventilating a sunroom can be a good way to extract some of that heat energy before you allow air from the rest of the home to reenter the space'. Alexander says this is typically done at night after sundown so that the room is in its natural cooling cycle.
4. Insulation can prevent heat from entering
Insulation is a great way of keeping the heat as well as the cold out of your home. This can be installed into the ceiling, interior walls and the windows and doors.
'Part of keeping the temperature in a sunroom down related to how much thermal radiation is heating up the materials that make up the walls and ceiling of the area,' Alexander tells us. 'If the walls and ceiling have a thick layer of insulation between them, this will act as a thermal barrier to heat transfer between mediums. Preventing heat from making the transition between mediums helps to keep the temperature in the room as a whole down'.
5. Add a evaporative cooler into your home
Alexander says if there is simple no way of getting ventilation into your space, and other sunroom costs like insulation would be prohibitive, you can opt for adding an evaporative cooler into the mix.
'An evaporative cooler can lower the temperature in a room by nearly 20 degrees in some instances, making them a solid solution to overheating sunrooms,' Alexander explains.
The expert says some of these units are even small enough to fit on a desktop, as the technology has come a long way over the years.
