When the sun’s out, you don’t want to sit indoors. You created your patio for the purpose of taking advantage of the best that summertime offers, so who wants to be indoors then? When the thermometer’s mercury climbs towards 100 degrees Fahrenheit and beyond, you can make your patio cool and refreshing living space. We have taken a deep dive into the best ways to make your patio cooler – join us to learn more.
To make your outdoor patio cooler in the summertime, there are a number of options available. Without redesigning or rebuilding your patio, you can cool down your outdoor patio with cost-effective, efficient solutions. You, your family, and guests will better enjoy their times on your patio.
10 Ways on How to Cool Down Outdoor Patio
1. Screened-In Patio
The most intensive way is to screen-in your patio (if it is possible with its layout and design using your home’s existing walls). The benefit of a screened-in patio encloses your patio space is that it can be utilized year-round providing cooler spaces in summer and warmth in winter times.
With a screened-in patio’s retractable shades, you are better able to control the temperature of your patio area: the shades, when drawn down, can block out the sun’s hottest rays while still allowing you to enjoy your patio and the outdoors. This option is also the most energy-efficient solution as it doesn’t require any devices to control the temperature.
2. Awning
While screening in your patio will also extend your home’s living spaces and offer a year-round additional living space, you might not want nor be able to screen in your patio. Adding an awning is your solution to this problem to cool down your patio.
Retractable awnings allow shade on your patio that can lower the temperature on your patio. By simply lowering or raising the awning to suit your needs, you can either keep the harmful effects of the sun’s hottest rays away from you or enjoy the morning warmth on your patio with the awning retracted.
3. Bar
There is another way to cool down yourself, your family, and guests on your patio: keep them hydrated with cold and refreshing drinks. Perfect for accompanying your grill and swimming pool (if your home has one), adding a bar would be a great addition to your home and your patio living areas.
The cold drinks will help you to make the outdoors’ heat more bearable while making and sharing sundowners or cold beers with guests makes for a relaxing time.
4. Patio Mister Kit
Screening in your patio, adding an awning and building or adding a bar to your patio might require structural changes to your outdoor living space. However, you can cool down your outdoor patio by simpler and more effective means. A patio mister kit, such as those used by restaurants and popular at outdoor music festivals, are easy to install and are budget-friendly.
Essentially a series of water pipes with jet spray nozzles fed by a connection to your garden pipe, patio mister kits provide a steady stream of fine mists of water to keep you and your guests cool and are effective at cooling down outdoor patio areas. Patio mister kits also provide a relaxing ambiance, with an exotic and calming effect. The only downside to patio mister kits is that they leave fine layers of water everywhere the mists fall. However, in the hotter climes, those will of course evaporate away within seconds.
5. Patio Umbrellas
A large patio umbrella will shield you from the sun while also allowing the outdoors to be more acceptable. These umbrellas are affordable and come in a variety of designs and colours to suit any theme or style you desire to match your existing patio furniture. Being portable, you can carry them anywhere to create shade on your patio.
6. Rugs
If your patio furniture is placed on paving stones, bricks, or concrete, you will know that these surfaces can feel as hot as a stove plate during the peak of summer. While an umbrella will help to keep the sun away, the sun still heats up the patio’s paving to burn your feet.
Placing a rug under the furniture and walking area will protect your feet and keep the sun’s radiant heat away from your furniture too to help to cool down your patio a little bit more. Choosing the right colors will also help to reflect the sun’s rays: lighter colors work best to reflect the sun’s heat away. The bonus is that a rug will make your patio area look like an outdoor room.
7. High-Velocity Fans
A high-velocity fan and floor fan (most popular in pedestal stand types) don’t actually cool the air. While they do generate moving air and help to circulate air through your patio space, they work by fooling your body into feeling cooler due to their wind chill effect. As the moving air from the fan blows onto and across your skin, that moving air increases your body’s evaporation of its perspiration.
This then lowers your body’s temperature to make you feel cooler. These high-velocity fans offer a respite from the heat and will help to make you and your guests feel cooler, but you would need more than one to sufficiently cool a small group of people or your entire patio area in the same way as a ceiling fan, patio mister kit, patio misting fan or portable evaporative coolers.
8. Ceiling Fans
Ceiling fans, as you would know from experience as many homes already have these installed, help a lot to circulate the air to cool down your patio space. Ceiling fans come in a range of styles and power outputs to choose from – and they also help to make your patio seem more part of your indoor living spaces.
9. Patio Misting Fans
Similar in principle to the patio misting kits, a patio mister fan is able to spray the water mists to more areas around your patio. While these are designed to resemble floor-standing fans and pedestal fans (except patio misting fans are connected to your garden hose and an electrical outlet), they are comprised of several mist jets that disperse water with the airflow to blow cool air through the patio space.
As these are portable, they can be moved anywhere they are most needed. Another benefit is that these are efficient to run and use only a small percentage of power that an air conditioning unit would use.
10. Portable Evaporative Coolers
Portable evaporative coolers are like the patio misting fans but are slightly bigger and more powerful in their cooling. Portable evaporative coolers control temperatures by evaporation. These don’t use jets spraying mists of water like patio misting fans, but rather allows water to dissipate passively into cooling pads to cool the air that is sucked in through the machine and then distributed by the fan to cool the air.
The cooling pads increase the amount of evaporation that takes place and it also cools the air around it. Portable evaporative coolers are more efficient than compressor-type air conditioner systems and use no chemicals (such as freon as found in air conditioning units). These machines use just a fan, water, and a pump to circulate the water from the connected garden hose. Evaporative coolers can reduce a patio’s air temperature by as much as 25 degrees Fahrenheit. What’s more, these are affordable and will last for many summertime seasons to keep you, your family, and guests cool.
Conclusion
From enclosing your patio, adding shade with awning or umbrellas, to using high-velocity fans and portable evaporation coolers, you can cool down your outdoor patio to make it more comfortable for yourself, your family and your guests. No matter your budget or your patio’s design, you we have shown you the 10 best ways to guaranteed to make your patio the coolest place to be this summertime.
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