From yoghurt to luxury sails: how to shade your home from supercharged UK heatwaves

Researchers at Loughborough University test different shading methods. Photograph: Ben Roberts/Loughborough University View image in fullscreen Researchers at Loughborough University test different shading methods. Photograph: Ben Roberts/Loughborough University From yoghurt to luxury sails: how to shade your home from supercharged UK heatwaves As hot weather becomes more common, companies and homeowners are coming up with innovative ways to keep properties cool When graphic designer Marc Alabaster had a new set of glass doors installed at his West Sussex home eight years ago, he soon realised how they magnified the heat of the afternoon sun. “The kitchen was 40-plus degrees,” he said. Then he went on holiday to Spain and saw an apartment building wrapped in louvre-like rows of angled fins or blades that shaded the external walls against the sun. “I was like, ‘that’s fantastic’,” said Alabaster. He asked around and discovered the term brise-soleil, which he had never heard before. “It’s French for sun-breaker,” he said. View image in fullscreen Brise-soleil installed on the British embassy building in Sana’a, Yemen. Photograph: Peter Cook-VIEW/Alamy Alabaster now owns Brise Soleil UK, which has found a market among homeowners looking for ways of boosting shade around their properties, especially over large windows and glass doors. The climate crisis is bringing more and more supercharged heatwaves to the UK. This week, some people have taken to sticking cardboard or reflective materials to their windows – or even smearing them with yoghurt – after the Met Office issued a rare red weather warning . But more permanent solutions are available, too, ranging from the affordable to the luxurious. Most UK homes don’t have external shading, according to the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE). But it’s not only residential properties that are affected. Schools, hospitals and care homes in the UK also risk becoming unsafe during heatwaves, partly due to inadequate shading. “The UK needs sustained investment in infrastructure and public spaces so that our buildings, transport systems and cities are designed to cope with future heat,” said Ruth Shilston, global discipline lead at engineering consultancy Mott MacDonald. New regulations on overheating in new residential buildings came into force in England in 2022, but for the majority of people living in old housing stock, the responsibility for adapting their home to cope with the climate crisis falls to them. Aimée Daniels, founder of Shaded , said the record-breaking heatwave of 2022 inspired her to come up with an aesthetically pleasing, window-shielding solution, primarily for residential homes. “It was just brutal,” she said, recalling conditions in her west-facing London flat at the time. “I was looking at my windows and thinking, ‘Why isn’t there something that you don’t have to drill in from the outside?’.” Daniels subsequently designed a mini awning that clips to sash windo