I voted no. I’d just throw back the blankets, strip down, set up a fan, or turn on the A/C. If I’m hot, I don’t want something else on top of me.
No. Too easy. 
I’m in the middle of a lovely little thing called perimenopause. When I have one of those lovely little nighttime hot flashes, I throw back the covers and cool off under the ceiling fain. And even though it works, I hate the sensation of being uncovered. I need that bit of weight on top of me to feel comfortable.
So if there were a way of avoiding hypothermia, I’d take a cooling blanket in a heartbeat.
Can anyone tell us what indigenous people of hot climates do about this problem?
For instance, there are incredible low-tech solutions to cooling problems available, like this refrigerator consisting of two clayware pots.
So what do people do when they live in Yemen or Mexico and they can’t sleep from the heat and don’t have an airco?
Sleep outside, on cool windy roofs or under trees? Sleep in a cool thickwalled cellars? Sleep near a stream under a moquito net? In a hammock that allows the wind to circulate around your body?
We might learn from them.
In North Cameroon, where hot season nights often don’t dip below 100, people sleep outside through the worst of it. Most families simply lay out woven mats over their gravel yards (which usually has a metal or thatch overhang, or at least some trees), which is surprisingly comfortable. Some people took it a step further and slept on local stick beds, with small sticks stacked like Lincoln logs to provide support while still allowing air to circulate.
It’s not a perfect system. You don’t get great sleep that way, but a hot season was not an important agricultural time, so most people could afford to be a bit sluggish and nappy during hot season days. Another draw back is that you are going to wake up the moment the sun rises and be forced out of bed when the real heat starts, whether you like it or not. there is no sleeping in during hot season. Finally, security was always an issue. Since people live in multi-family compounds and everyone sleeps outside, it was somewhat safe. But it could still be pretty freaky.
In Mali, pretty much everyone sleeps on the roof- in my experience they’d just haul a foam mattress up there. They can pull their ladders up for security. It’s pretty scary because they are just flat roofs and there really isn’t much to keep you from rolling right off!
In Southern Spain, where the summer temperature averages 100-110 degrees, houses are constructed with the heat in mind. They are usually built with at least one story underground, and the floors and walls are lined with marble. The houses are whitewashed to repel heat. The lower level of a traditional house stays so cool it’s almost like it was air-conditioned.
Count me in the crowd that loves a cool sheets to climb under, but wants them warm after a certain period of time.
Generally, I just turn the air up. I have central air and a window unit in the bedroom. I’ll turn the central air off at night, but turn on the window unit to keep the bedroom extra cool. Works like a charm.
I would, however, love to have a pillow that stays cool-- or at least, cycles into “cooling phase” every so often. There is nothing in life quite like that cool side of the pillow.
My water pillow is a “Chiroflow Premium Water based Pillow”. I bought it at my chiropractors office but they may sell them onilne. The cool thing about this pillow is you can adjust the amount of water inside the pillow to make it firmer or softer. if you want it cool you just turn it and it plumps the pillow and cools it.
Wait, you’re using the assumption the cooling blanket would be on all night.
Do people leave heating blankets on all night? I’d be way too scared. I let mine run on top of my bed for a while before bed, then turn it off when I crawl in. The heat that’s in there is enough. Aren’t heating blankets a huge source of fires?
But why would you treat a cooling blanket like a heating blanket? You’d pretty much have to keep it on all night, because otherwise your body heat would just warm it all up to where it would be before you turned the blanket on.
I get cold too easily for a cooling blanket
shrug I leave mine on all night when it’s super cold. It is glorious to wake up to an extra toasty bed.
My understanding is that the heating blanket fire problem had a lot to do with older models- newer ones have great auto shut offs (mine shuts off after 8 hours regardless), along with overrides to shut down if something goes wrong.
For example: my idiot dog jumped where the cord connects to my last blanket. The display kept giving me some error code and it just refused to turn on. Had to get a new one.
Of all the random things to run across, I found a bed chill pad when I was looking for a laptop chill pad. This thread immediately popped into my mind.
I have no idea if this thing works, and it’s pretty pricy. $400 for twin, $450 for full, $700 for king! I still can’t help thinking it’s a hypothermia risk, though.
In 5 years, I’ll have one. I should probably start saving now.