Stopping heat from building up upstairs

The pattern of overheating in houses

Oddly enough, inside a house the temperature rises as you go up, whereas outdoors the opposite happens.

Heating systems that use air to carry heat make that worse.

Copying nature: the sun as the model

To avoid overheating upstairs, the thing to do is copy nature, which means copying the sun.

Its heat reaches us from above as far infrared radiation, which barely heats the air at all.

The radiant ceiling: what it changes

Your ceiling can do what the sun does, emitting far infrared radiation.

Because the air is barely heated, far less warm air rises to the floor above.

A radiant ceiling is the form of heating best suited to keeping the upper floor liveable.