You've done all you can to make your home efficient, but what can you do outside the house to cool it down?
What can be done if you're still feeling in the heat and chewing through power bills?
Looking at your garden, driveway, street, and neighbourhood could be key.
Energy consultant Alan Langworthy said keeping the sun off the bricks or blocks is key to cooling the house.
"If you can shade that thermal mass, it'll reduce the heat load on the building," he said.
He recommended building a carport which can effect shade on a home, but also cover a hot driveway.
Architect Jenny Culligan agreed, but said to be cautious with shading.
"Use vegetation or some sort of shade structure to stop sunshine hitting the home, especially in the west," she said.
"Protect the house from every angle. But don't stop the breezes."
Not all shade created equal
Planting can be tricky, particularly if you don't have much soil around your home and you don't know much about trees.
Horticulturalist Emily Hinds said trees around your home and suburb could provide more cooling properties than just shade.
"The cooling effect we get from them is not only just shade from the sun, but also that evaporative cooling effect transpiring from the leaves," she said.
"They're just pulling up so much water from the soil.
"You do need large trees, because they're very effective at doing that."
But shade is important — and the type of shade is key.
Ms Hinds said trees with thick, overlapping leaf cover were the best at providing shade.
Look west first
Darwin is a city which needs to take shade seriously.
Ms Hinds said Mimusops elengi, or Spanish cherry, were a good option to protect a home from the sun.
"They're nice and lollipop-shaped. If you keep them pruned, they throw a really thick, heavy, deep shade. So they're very effective," she said.
"You'd have to manipulate how large those trees are going to be, depending on the size of your yard.
"In the wet season, western walls are really important to shade and I would focus on those first."
Under the milkwood
Although it's not the greatest shade tree, Ms Hind's favourite is the Alstonia actinophylla or northern milkwood.
"It's a tree full of character," she said.
"They just have that really thick, corky bark.
"They do drop a few leaves, but they're massive. And they withstand cyclones."
She also cited the wide shade provided by the Albizia saman, or rain tree.
"They've just got large root systems which create a bit of havoc for the lawn, they come up and create a bit of a trip hazard," she said.
But she advised gardeners to visit nurseries and the botanic gardens or take notes on trees in the suburbs that catch your eye.
"Double-check with them that this would be something that you could plant in that situation without creating a problem for yourself, the council, or the neighbours," she said.
The gum is another controversial choice.
"Trees will protect trees. If you've got a grove of trees planted together, and then they're much more able to withstand and buffer the wind from different directions and protect each other as well as protecting homes," Ms Hinds said.
"As much as some of them can be damaging, it can also probably be a little bit of a life and infrastructure saver in some situations."
Tight corners
But what if you have only a narrow place to plant a tree on the verge outside, or there's no soil at all?
ABC talkback gardener Teena Sandford recommended large planter boxes, and also suggested the northern milkwood as a winner as it "bonsais well", which means it's roots and size adapts to its environment.
"You need a tree that can handle really tight conditions," she said.
"It's one of those plants that needs full sun 100 per cent of the time."
Ms Sandford is challenged on her home block with power lines restricting the height of trees she can plant.
But her solutions are Dracaena, song of India plant (Dracaena reflexa), Malay stripe, and tabebuia.
"They only grow about two metres across, and you'll get about three metres tall maximum on them," she said.
"They're very slow growing, they can handle full sun, they're pretty tough. They can only handle water once a week."
