What’s The Optimal Temperature for Your Home?
As Queenslanders, we spend a lot of time indoors with the air-con on, especially now that it’s summer and temperatures are soaring well into the 30s. While entering a nice, cool air conditioned room is always a welcomed experience in the thick of summer, there’s always the issue of having to adjust your air conditioner because it’s too cold – or on the other hand, you may be finding that you just can’t cool down enough. While we’ve all heard of the good advice of running your air con at 24 degrees, sometimes this is ineffective – a 24 can feel different in different spaces. So, how do you find the perfect temperature for your space?
Your home’s perfect temperature is one which provides maximum comfort, does not break the bank, and does not require constant adjusting. As the saying goes, you set it and forget it. While you may think you have to constantly adjust your air con to keep everyone in your home comfortable, Air-Rite is here to show you that you can achieve the right balance with little effort. After all, your air con should be working for you; not the other way around.
So, What’s the Perfect Temperature?
We all have different preferences when it comes to climate, so finding the perfect temperature for each individual can be tricky. Temperature preference can change depending on age, weight, and gender. Your air conditioner also plays a factor as the age of the unit (and it’s efficiency) can manipulate the feel of the temperature depending on the size of the room you’re in and how the system functions. So, whilst the perfect temperature consensus may not exist, around 21–22 celsius is found to be the most ideal and healthiest temperature for inside living all year round. For older or younger citizens (elderly people, children, and babies), or those who are ill, a slighter warmer temperature (around 23–24) might be more ideal. Generally, air conditioning specialists recommend between 21-22 degrees in winter, and 24-25 degrees in summer to ensure maximum energy efficiency for your unit. To delve even further into finding the perfect temperature for your household, read on to learn more about age, health, and environmental factors that will affect this.
Importance of the Perfect Temperature
The environment we live in is directly linked to our wellbeing, so feeling too hot or too cold can influence our mood and our overall health (e.g. overly hot temperatures can make it difficult to sleep and cause fatigue). Children are especially sensitive to room temperature – they have smaller bodies and can’t regulate their body temperatures as well.
Extreme conditions such as heat and humidity are huge factors that influence our wellbeing in Australia. These conditions can impact on our physical and intellectual activity, making even the simplest of tasks an absolute chore. The heat and humidity makes us irritable and can make it difficult to focus on tasks. Having a proper air conditioning system in place helps cut through the heat and humidity of Aussie summers and improves our ability to perform and complete work tasks. Lower room temperatures also decrease the levels of dehydration in the body, as we sweat and lose more water in the heat. Once installed properly, air conditioning systems effectively renew and improve air quality, which also helps those with respiratory problems.
Environmental Factors
Constant over-cooling is problematic as it affects energy use, contributing to more greenhouse gas emissions and increasing electricity bills. Not cooling enough, on the other hand, is also a waste of energy. Therefore, it’s important to get the temperature right to best serve environmental interests. Thankfully, many modern systems will also come with an energy-saving “eco-mode” that runs your system slower – air passes through the compressor and is emitted into your home slower… very cool. This makes your air con still run efficiently, though will less power. For ultimate efficiency, let your home reach your desired temperature before putting your air conditioner into this mode.
Did You Know: Cooler Temperatures can Help Regulate our Natural Melatonin Levels!
For those people that enjoy the cold weather, rooms between 16 and 18 degrees support the body in its production of melatonin. Melatonin helps promote sleep, is an anti-ageing hormone, and is linked with regulating menstrual cycles, aiding weight loss, and enhancing our moods – to name a few benefits. On the other hand, lack of sleep can lead to wrinkles and dark circles for those who aren’t getting enough hours of sleep. Sleep is a time for the body to heal, renew, and detoxify, and helps with a variety of aspects to our lives. While it might not be economical to run our air conditioners as 16–18, letting your air conditioner run while you sleep can help you get a good rest. Keep reading to learn more about your ideal sleeping temperature.
Ways to Find Your Household’s Perfect Temperature
Is your household getting fired up about air temperature? It’s time for a house meeting to discuss and agree on a perfect temperature to settle on for summer. If everyone’s got different preferences, you may need to find a medium that everyone can agree on. This is, of course, for general spaces that need cooling (or if you’re using a ducted system that can’t be adjusted for various rooms).
If you’re fortunate (and smart) enough to have a ducted system that can differentiate temperatures between rooms or multiple split systems across your house, you won’t need to settle this issue. Everyone can set their space to their own preferences!
If you’re thinking this summer might be the one to introduce a more diversified air conditioning system to your home then check out Air-Rite’s range of ducted and split system units.
Now, let’s look at some temperature recommendations for the various settings in your home.
Recommended Temperatures for Working or Studying at Home
A comfortable study increases productivity. Therefore, getting the temperature perfect is important for those needing to work to their best potential. Generally, the perfect temperature for productivity is between 21 and 22 degrees celsius – this is for most people but can be slightly modified for individual preferences. If your study’s temperature is too warm or too cool, productivity dips as we begin sweating or shivering and focusing more on our discomfort.
Recommended Sleeping Temperature
The single most important factor that affects your sleep quality is temperature. If you’re experiencing interrupted sleep patterns as well as frequent tossing and turning at night, there’s a good chance that your bedroom temperature isn’t ideal. Your room may not be cool and comfortable enough for sleep. As our bodies need to cool slightly before drifting off to sleep, we struggle to sleep if a room is too hot. This then leads to fatigue and irritability the next day. So, how warm is too warm?
For an ideal sleep, you don’t want your bedroom over 24 degrees. Temperatures over 24 degrees can cause restlessness as they may disrupt sleep due to not providing enough coolness for quality sleep. When your bedroom temperature is at 24 or slightly lower, your body temperature drops enough to initiate sleep. This improves your quality of sleep, which allows your body and mind to recharge. However, anything too cold can also be problematic. A room that is too cold will make it harder to doze off, affecting the quality of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep–aka, the time in which we have the highest brain activity during sleep. This sleep stage is crucial to our mental processes, as is the non-REM sleep; when they are incomplete, our cognitive brain function that concerns decision-making can be affected.
Other miscellaneous temperatures to note:
Avoiding asthma symptoms: For those living with asthma, it is crucial to find the perfect temperature for your home as respiratory issues can flare up in certain temperatures and climates. According to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, you should keep your thermostat set to about 21 degrees celsius, as this temperature doesn’t trigger asthma symptoms.
When exercising indoors: Whether you’re into cardio or lifting weights, the ideal temperature for working out indoors is anywhere from 20 to 22 degrees celsius. According to Livestrong.com, 21 degrees is the ideal temperature for sweat sessions as this is neither too cold nor warm. Running an air conditioner colder than this might lead to you getting sick as your body is already producing sweat to cool your body. Further, some find breathing cool air while using the treadmill or doing other cardio is uncomfortable for the nostrils and airways, which gets in the way of a good exercise session. Obviously, working out in air con mainly comes down to preference; however, you want to keep the temperature as comfortable as possible to avoid adverse health effects.
Recommended temperature for babies
As babies cannot regulate their own body temperature as easily as adults, they may need to sleep in a slightly warmer climate than your own. Babies also generally do not sleep with as many bedding covers to reduce the risk of SIDS, so these are ineffective as keeping them warm (although wraps and sleep sacks are highly effective!).
Recommended temperature for the office environment
Trying to choose a temperature for your office environment can be a difficult, practically impossible task for many reasons. Unless you have a small office, it’s going to require multiple split systems or a ducted system to cool multiple people efficiently and this can multiply the total of your energy bill. Commercial buildings have different cooling needs. Therefore, it’s a good idea to talk to a professional about finding the most efficient and economical system for your office building. If you already have this, then the key to setting the optimal air conditioner temperature in an office is finding the balance between energy efficiency and keeping the room at a comfortable temperature for maximum productivity.
Typically, Australian offices are cooled at a comfortable 21–22 degrees as many people believe that this is the optimal temperature for productivity. To make up for different preferences, you may have to move desks and employees to accommodate them. For example, those who need more warmth can be places far from vents and near sunny windows.
Keep Cool!
With yet another scorching summer ahead, it’s as important as ever to have your cooling needs sorted before the mercury starts to climb. With these tips, you can ensure you have every space in your home set to its ideal temperature to achieve ultimate comfort and quality of life.
Are you looking to upgrade the cooling system in your home, office, or industrial area? Air-Rite can help you in all of these departments. We install the highest quality air conditioners on the market to ensure you have a system that will last the years, keeping your life heat and drama-free. Contact us today to learn more about our products and services.
