Not Curtains, Not Shades: The Alternative Blanket Solution For Beating The Summer Heat

With heatwaves becoming seemingly more and more unbearable every year, it can get difficult to find ways to keep your home cool in the sweltering summer heat. Cranking up the air conditioning is often the go-to method of cooling down your home, but the cost of constantly running the AC can quickly get as high as the temperatures you're trying to combat. If this form of climate control is not an option for you, you can make hot days a little more tolerable by properly placing and utilizing tower, box, and ceiling fans to keep your home cool in the summer to circulate air to help you feel cooler. To aid in keeping your home feeling more comfortable during summer heat waves, investing in heat-blocking window coverings can also help prevent the sun's rays from entering and warming up your living space. If you don't have energy-efficient or temperature-regulating curtains or shades readily available, blankets make for a great alternative and affordable solution for blocking and beating the summer heat. 

When it comes down to it, curtains and shades are just large pieces of various textiles that are placed over windows. While some of these coverings may come lined with layers of energy-saving and insulating materials, simple blankets can achieve a similar effect if you need something to cover and insulate a window in a pinch. To use your cozy throws as cost-efficient heat-blockers, just drape them over a curtain rod or hang it off of curtain hooks that are already in place over a window. Just like that, you now have an alternate blanket solution to keep summer heat out of your living space.

Placing blankets over windows in your home, especially in the summer, can help lower the temperature of a room by two or three degrees – which can feel like a drastic cool-off during a sweltering summer heat wave. Similar to how curtains or shades can be used to block out sound, light, cold, and heat, blankets can work as insulators for your living spaces. Hanging these sheets of fabric over your windows and keeping them there over the course of a hot summer day can keep your space cool by blocking the heat from the sun's rays from entering your room. Instead, the heat generated by the sunlight becomes trapped between the window and the fabric of the blanket, preventing it from seeping into and heating up your space. 

In combination with air conditioning or blowing fans, blankets can assist with keeping rooms cool in the summer by helping reduce a room's heat gain, especially when hung over windows that receive direct sunlight. To make the most out of this alternative room-cooling solution, try hanging blankets that are made from thicker, naturally insulating materials like wool and cotton;  wool throw blankets are especially useful, as they can even last a decade or more of regular use if taken care of properly. If you don't have a single wool or cotton blanket, hanging multiple layers of throws can achieve a similar effect.