Heatwaves: expert tips on redesigning UK homes to cope with hotter temperatures |
As the UK prepares for the third heatwave of 2026, most people will be hoping to try and keep cool at home.
Building regulations to protect homes from overheating were introduced in 2022. These require all new homes to be checked at the design stage to see if they might be at risk of overheating. If the overheating risk is high, the architect has to make changes to the design.
Given that the UK government plans to build 1.5 million homes by 2029 and the climate is predicted to continue to warm, reducing overheating in new homes is essential. Around 4.6 million bedrooms (19% of the stock) and 3.6 million living rooms (15%) in homes in England were found to have overheated during the summer of 2018.
At Loughborough University we have been experimenting with a pair of semi-detached houses, each fitted with different shading devices, to see what might work to reduce overheating. A lot more needs to be done to make sure UK homes are able to cope with the high temperatures they are likely to experience more often in the future.
If you live in the UK, count the number of window shades you can see on a street. While these were previously quite common in the Victorian period, for instance, most new homes don’t have external shading. But they are one of the most effective passive cooling measures (methods to lower indoor temperatures without air conditioning), as well as being relatively cheap to install.
Ongoing experiments in our pair of test houses have shown that external shading can reduce indoor temperatures by over 6°C, which can make a meaningful improvement to........