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Revolutionary Paint: How to Make Surfaces Stay Cool in the Sun

Tech Ingredients5 HN recommenders · 2023–2026
985K views · tutorial · evergreen · Uploaded 2023-03-03

Tech Ingredients shows how to make a homemade radiative cooling paint, with a custom liquid panel that cools below ambient temperature outdoors. The video covers the materials and how to apply the paint.

HN points to it as an impressive, hands-on DIY demonstration of passive radiative cooling that works in practice.

Materials scienceChemistryRenewables, batteries & storage

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10 comments from Hacker News

@slimsag2023 · in “Energy-saving coating without pigment keeps the surface beneath cool”

Two YouTube researchers[0][1] (they make science content that is very much not in the traditional form of YouTube) have been working on Infrared Cooling Paint for almost a year now and have been detailing how individuals can make it at home (although a fairly involved/lengthy process today.) There's definitely something here, hopefully someone sells it pre-made, I'd love to try some. [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

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@bertil2023 · in “Vietnam records highest ever temperature of 44.1C”

Technology Connection is a fantastic YouTube channel that shows how to build all sorts of useful things. Their latest video is on passive cooling and very impressive. [VIDEO] Warning: the “senior-engineer; knows how to make stuff” energy from that channel is off the charts. Enough to warn people on HN.

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@Azrael30002023 · in “Making Radiative Sky Cooling Paint (With Novel CaCO₃ Microsphere Synthesis) [video]”

You can check out Tech Ingredients video [0] on the same topic, which will give an answer to your question. It is: Yes, it is better than regular white paint [0] [VIDEO]

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@scotty792023 · in “Passive radiative cooling ceramic with high solar reflectivity”

Great video about making home-made high reflectivity paint: [VIDEO] Aluminium plate painted with this paint is cooler when exposed to the sun not only than unpainted plate but also ambient air which feels really magical for me.

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@slimsag2024 · in “Using a solar oven as a radiant refrigerator at night”

You might like NightHawkInLight's videos on the topic[0] and Tech Ingredients[1] - they've been working on making paint using this technology with an at-home DIY process and experimenting with it. [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO]

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@20after42024 · in “Using a solar oven as a radiant refrigerator at night”

Sort of related: the YouTube channel "Tech Ingredients" do some cool things with radiant cooling: [VIDEO]

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@energ82025 · in “NASA's Voyager Found a 30k-50k Kelvin "Wall" at the Edge of Solar System”

It's a thing in from thousands of years ago [LINK] and today [LINK] for PDRC there are a couple good videos about it from NightHawkInLight [LINK] , [LINK] and Tech Ingredients [LINK] [VIDEO]

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@Llamamoe2025 · in “The World's 2.75B Buildings”

Are you perhaps thinking of radiative cooling, e.g. paint that reflects close to 100% of all light, excluding the spectrum at which room-temperature objects radiate heat, resulting in a net cooling effect? E.g. [Revolutionary Paint: How to Make Surfaces Stay Cool in the Sun]( [VIDEO] )

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@jcims2025 · in “Mechanical power generation using Earth's ambient radiation”

DIY radiative cooling paint from YouTuber NightHawkInLight - [LINK] It has pretty impressive performance. Tech Ingredients did one or two vids as well - [VIDEO] Was thinking of whipping up a batch for my rv.

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@netsharc2026 · in “The French are painting their windows with chalk to beat the heat”

Using CaCO3 which is calcium carbonate, like the article. This science-lecturer-esque guy is using Barium Sulfate: [VIDEO]

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