Right way to keep your house cool

[Withyouinamo]

Which works better for you on a hot, sunny day?

a) trying to block sunlight by keeping curtains drawn - and doors & windows shut - so as to keep the air in the house cool, or

b) opening doors and windows to let any breeze blow through & let rising warm air escape from upstairs rooms.

@Withyouinamo do you not have roof vents in your loft?
That does let the hot air out.
It would be absurd not to when you are sleeping in a loft especially with the hotter summers, because yes, there's nowhere for that hot air to escape.
Our ceiling fans are life-savers, we have six of them throughout our house, and we certainly do use them all!

I suddenly got the idea for cardboard as we had some big items delivered awhile back and still had the cardboard and they block out pretty much all the window area so I've gone for that over aesthetics 😅!

My two half parasols have worked a treat but with temps here at 31 in the shade despite the sun not being directly on the sun the windows I would say are now tepid which is unusual, but it is silly hot today!

@Sunnydayze43 Yeah we've got regular windows & Velux windows which we leave open - and that works, but somehow the loft still gets a few degrees hotter than the rest of the house.
@GentleSheep I'm gonna put white card up on the Velux above the stairwell up to the loft; I think the sunlight coming through that south-facing window is responsible for a lot of the heat up there.

Interesting:
https://inews.co.uk/news/housing/britains-homes-made-retain-heat-shame-about-35c-summers-3794225

Paywall, sorry.