Turn it on, chill out

Avoid a meltdown this summer with homewares that help to keep temperatures low. By Nicole Swengley

Tuesday 03 August 2004 19:00 EDT

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Soaring temperatures have their drawbacks. If you're working at home, there'll be no office air-con or water cooler, and anyone coping with youngsters will know that tempers fray more quickly in the heat. So investing in homewares that cool everyone down can pay dividends when a heatwave strikes.

If you're chained to a home-office desk, check out Gadget Shop's retro-styled Portable Breeze fans (£15), whose blades are made from soft foam that's safe to touch. Gadget Shop also stocks the aviation-style Propello Fan (£80), a desk fan with variable angles of airflow from trendy designers Black & Blum. Soft rubber blades make it virtually silent, even at full speed, while rubber pads on the base won't scratch furniture or work surfaces.

Ocean's air circulators are high-powered yet quiet. Place them by a window or open door and they'll clear a stuffy room in minutes. There are three sizes, each with three speeds: £39.95, £55, £75 plus £4.95 p&p.

Cinni's classic chrome fans are a durable alternative. Their desk fans have cast iron bases with either a fixed head/ single speed (£105), or oscillating head with three speeds (from £130). Pedestal fans stand between 115cm and 165cm tall with heads that rotate through 90 degrees (from £165). You can buy them online from Living Heaven.

The sleek silvery Prem-I-Air tower fan (£39.95 from John Lewis) has a built-in ioniser to improve air quality. A remote control device operates its oscillating facility and there are three speed settings, a sleep mode and four-hour timer. A remote control also operates Boffi's stylish ceiling fan, which has five speeds and is made of laminated wood (£1,724 from Alternative Plans).

Mobile air conditioning units are more efficient than fans since they cool the air instead of just blowing it around. They produce the same chilled air that you find in air-conditioned offices or hotels, but cost half the price of an equivalent installed system and you can take them with you when you move. The same unit can serve different rooms - living room in daytime, bedroom at night - but their main drawback is that they need to be vented since they blow as much heat from the back as cool air through the front. John Lewis sells the Amcor 2000M portable air conditioner/dehumidifier (£249), and remote-controlled Amcor AMC 1200R (£369). The Air Improvement Centre stocks a wider choice of units and offers excellent advice.

Mini-coolers are a great way to keep cold drinks at hand wherever you need them. You can stash 20 standard-sized drinks cans in a portable mini-cooler (£79.99 plus £3.95 p&p) from iwantoneofthose. Or remove the internal shelf and chill six wine bottles. This compact cooler (44cm x 32cm x 32cm) has a clear door so it's easy to check supplies and comes with a mains AC adaptor and in-car charger.

Even funkier is Special EFX's silvery drinks can-shaped cooler (£99.95), with its "ring-pull" handle. This also runs off mains electricity or an in-car charger and takes 10 drinks cans or four wine bottles. For a really stylish portable mini-fridge look no further than Homebase's silvery Memphis (£59.99), which takes six wine bottles or 12 cans.

Bosch's big-capacity fridge-on-wheels can be manoeuvred wherever you want it. Its electronic temperature control keeps wine, beer and soft drinks at required temperatures while the removable Plexiglass top surface has handles so you can use it as a tray. Inside, there's a height-adjustable storage basket to keep the contents organised. It costs £599 from Buyers & Sellers.

CDA's retro-styled Picazzo PC24 wheeled fridge-freezer (£950), means you can have ice-cream and cold desserts on tap along with cooling drinks. Just wheel it into the conservatory or out on the patio, lock the castors and plug in the extension lead. The fridge has a 165 litre capacity with a separate 49 litre freezer.

To be really cool, you need ice. Freeze it in alphabetical shapes that say "brrrr" or "ahhh" (ice-cube "word" trays, £3 from Marks & Spencer), crush it into cold tea or coffee (chrome ice crusher, £35 from John Lewis) or use it to fill huge acrylic (£16.95) or galvanised (£19) drinks buckets and keep bottles and cans chilled during parties (from Cucina Direct; add £4.95 p&p).

The Ice Box's hand-carved ice sculptures (from £200) have featured in pop videos and at film premieres. The company also supplies ice vodka luges (from £185) for parties and will deliver purified ice-cubes (12kg, £5) or crushed ice (12kg, £6) to your door seven days a week.

You won't need ice at all if you chill your Chardonnay in Brabantia's stylish wine cooler (£21), use Breville's electrically operated combined water filter and chiller (£99 from Argos), or slip Marks & Spencer's cooler sleeve (£16) in the freezer before popping it over a bottle.

Peltier's electric wine cooler has 10 temperature settings (£59.50 from John Lewis). Or go the whole hog and invest in a NorCave Super 7 free-standing wine cooler (£1,599), which keeps 100 bottles at a strictly controlled temperature behind smoke-tinted or opaque glass doors.

Now that's really cool.

www.air-improvement.co.uk, 020-7834 2834

www.alternative-plans.co.uk, 020-7228 6460

www.black-blum.com, 020-7633 0022

www.buyers-sellers.co.uk, 0845 5585

www.cda-europe.com, 0115 970 3553

www.cucinadirect.co.uk, 0870 4204300

www.gadgetshop.com, 0800 7838343

Homebase: 0845 0778888

www.theicebox.com, 020-7498 0800

www.iwantoneofthose.com, 0870 2411064

www.johnlewis.com, 08456 049049