Like all good life hacks worthy of viral fame, TikTok brought to our attention a cost-effective solution that can help keep your home more temperate and maximize the effectiveness of your current cooling systems: temporarily applying reflective insulation to your windows.
Many TikTokers credit this trick with lowering the temperature in rooms — especially those that have a lot of windows or are on the upper floors of their homes — but I was curious about the science behind these claims.
Joe Pesce, an astrophysicist at the National Science Foundation, explained to HuffPost by email that such window coverings work by blocking infrared radiation, which is the wavelength that we experience as heat from the sun.
“Visible light and infrared pass through most window material (as does some ultraviolet). When infrared passes through, it heats the surfaces inside our house, and then that heat radiates back off the surface – but at a wavelength that doesn’t pass [back] through glass,” Pesce said.
He said that these infrared photons that get trapped indoors are what contribute to heating your home. But if they are effectively blocked in the first place, that will help prevent interior spaces from heating up and lower the energy requirement to cool it.
Of course, this isn’t a completely new innovation. My own grandmother would often line her windows with aluminum foil in summer. The reflective material that’s hyped on TikTok, however, boasts the added element of insulation that also helps keep cool air in.
Pesce can’t speak to any specific brand or window covering in particular, but we found that Amazon’s highest-rated option uses a closed-cell polyethylene foam core, rather than bubbles, to offer even greater insulating capability. The retailer says both sides of the humidity- and water-resistant insulation material reflect 95% of radiant energy, and the roll is easy to cut and can be installed quickly using something like double-sided tape. It’s also available in rolls of several dimensions to accommodate windows of all sizes.
People on TikTok have used this particular insulation on their windows for the purpose of home cooling and with great success, too. You can read some of the Amazon reviews below or go ahead and grab a roll for yourself.
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