What is room temperature?

Think  about it with me for a second. It’s the temperature of the room you’re in, right?

But how are you feeling right now? Maybe a bit too hot, a bit too  cold, or just a little sticky? And what’s your thermostat set  to?

Maybe around 21 Celsius? Finding a room temperature that  makes a building feel comfortable turns out to be a fiendishly complicated task. It could involve your gender,  national origin, the season, and even whether you hate your job.

In fact, scientists and engineers  get a little bit hot under the collar trying to identify the perfect  conditions for our indoor spaces. Is anybody else warm in here? [♪ INTRO] Alright, so, let’s talk about why we  need to care about room temperature. It’s because life in industrialized  societies involves being inside… a lot.

And architects and engineers  need to design buildings that are comfortable to be inside for  lots of different people at the same time. Whether it’s a school, an office  building, or a shopping mall, people have to want to be there,  just at least a little bit. And combine that with trying to  manage heating and cooling costs; well, you’ve just got a  whole pickle on your hands.

The same number on a thermometer  doesn’t feel the same to everyone, and it creates a delicate balancing act. In fact, there are entire research  journals dedicated to this effort. During the development of this  episode we read more papers out of one called Building and Environment  than reasonably ought to exist.

You gotta love the things people  will just build a whole field out of. Now of course, that also means that  there are so many studies that you can almost always find one that  contradicts the one you’re reading, so I’m gonna try to present general  trends here, but they’re, like, general. In theory, finding the “right”  room temperature is pretty simple.

You basically want to maximize the  number of people who say they feel neither too hot nor too cold,  and minimize the number of people who say “well actually this kinda sucks.” I mean, there are equations to the Moon and back, and not everyone even agrees they work,  but theoretically that’s what you do. It’s worth noting that most of the literature  refers to people’s “comfort temperature” or “neutral temperature”  rather than room temperature, with the goal being to make the room  temperature match the comfort temperature. It’s not rocket science here.

But an interesting thing arises because  people are people, and a huge number of factors influence our perception of  temperature that no engineer can control. Gender is brought up frequently  in these discussions, and maybe you’re picturing office environments where the men are comfortable in  shorts as the women shiver in sweaters. And some studies do find a difference in the temperatures preferred by men and women.

But not all of them, and not  across all cultural backgrounds. Studies in Israel and Pakistan, for instance, didn’t find much difference in preferred  temperatures between men and women. The most interesting study we found sheds some light on the influence of both  gender and national origin.

They surveyed people working  at an office building in Tokyo, where Japanese and international  workers were present side by side. And apparently it was a pretty  uncomfortable place to be, because only 26% of them thought  the temperature was fine. The researchers broke up the responses by both gender and national origin,  Japanese or non-Japanese.

And the widest gulf was between  Japanese women and non-Japanese men, with the women feeling comfortable  a whole 3.1 degrees Celsius warmer. Which sure makes it seem like  both culture and gender can play a role in how we feel about temperature. And while the authors of the study said  they couldn’t account for certain things, like men wearing heavier business suits, how we dress is also related  to both culture and gender!

If you’re trapped in some sweaty office  all day, that might make you hate your job. Conversely, if you hate your  job, that might make you rate your office building  as being less comfortable. One study of an open office building  in the US found a strong link between job satisfaction and satisfaction with  the quality of the indoor environment.

That includes temperature, but also  stuff like lighting and background noise. But that difference doesn’t  show up in all studies. Still, if you find you’re always sweaty  at work, maybe try asking for a raise?

Time of year can also influence  our comfort temperature. In particular, we seem to put up with  higher temperatures in the summer. This can be as much as six or seven degrees  in buildings without climate control, but even with the A/C blasting,  we might still prefer it a degree or two warmer in the summer.

Interestingly, one study of homes  in the United Kingdom asked people to rate indoor temperatures as warmer  or cooler in summer and winter. And they rated interiors as  being warmer in the winter, even though it was slightly cooler. The researchers think this was  because people were comparing their indoor environment to the outside; you know, like, at least I’m in here where it’s warm.

Which suggests that even though the  thermostat could be set to twenty-five Celsius year round, that still might feel  different to us at different times of year. Humidity also affects our  perception of temperature. In one study where the  researchers were able to control the temperature and relative humidity,  participants rated rooms as feeling warmer when the humidity was higher.

This was especially true at higher temps. The researchers suggested that especially  in regions with cold winters and hot, humid summers, building engineers might want to account for humidity when setting temperatures. So, when you put it together,  what does all this tell us?

Well, my perfect indoor temperature  is not going to be the same as yours. My perfect indoor temperature  isn’t even going to be the same in January as it is in July. And that means you can’t just design a building, set the thermostat to 21, and brush the  dirt off your shoulder as you walk away.

Now one obvious answer is to let a  building’s users adjust the conditions, which is a perfect solution that has never started any fights in the history of the world. But it’s also just interesting  that there’s so much more to a comfortable room temperature  than the number on the thermostat. Room temperature is actually informed by a bunch of different facets  of our experience as humans.

And that’s just cool. Or… is it warm?  Or… Should we bump up the AC in here? [♪ OUTRO]