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How To Make Infrared Cooling Paint (Electricity Free Air Conditioning)

How To Make Infrared Cooling Paint (Electricity Free Air Conditioning) on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2022–2025.

NightHawkInLight

tutorial · evergreen

Open on YouTube

NightHawkInLight shows how to make ultra-white radiative paint that cools surfaces below ambient temperature without electricity. He walks through the research papers and the household-materials process.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as a practical, well-researched DIY demonstration of passive radiative cooling.

people recommended it
4
separate months
4
strong recommendations
1
discussed on HN
2022–2025
“This YouTuber[0] does an excellent job recreating chemistry research from papers and improving on the techniques to be accomplished with household materials.”
— teeray, Jul 2023, in “American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate”

What HN commenters said

6 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

teerayJul 2023Strongly recommends

This YouTuber[0] does an excellent job recreating chemistry research from papers and improving on the techniques to be accomplished with household materials. He documents his failures and takes an empirical approach to arriving at his successes. I’m not sure of his background, but it’s certainly research that he’s doing. Watching his channel always reminds me that the scientific method does not have “first obtain an expensive degree” as one of its steps. [0] ▶ this video

in “American universities have an incentive to seem extortionate” · View on HN

jcimsDec 2025Recommends

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

in “Mechanical power generation using Earth's ambient radiation” · View on HN

energ8Jun 2025Recommends

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 ▶ this video , [link] and Tech Ingredients [link] [link]

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

slimsagApr 2023Recommends

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] ▶ this video [1] [link]

in “Energy-saving coating without pigment keeps the surface beneath cool” · View on HN

jcimsMar 2023Cites it

>Only active cooling can cool anything below the ambient temperature. Not exactly: [link] Couple of videos explaining the effect ▶ this video [link]

in “Just How White Can White Paint Get?” · View on HN

spyderJul 2022Cites it

And for a better effect they could use paint that can cool below the ambient temperature by radiating infrared to space (if they aren't already using that, but it's probably more expensive): [link] Here is a YouTuber trying to making such paint: ▶ this video Another article: [link]

in “Why rails buckle in Britain” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Materials scienceChemistryPower grid, heating & buildingsradiative coolingdiy chemistrypaintpassive coolingmaterials science