Depending on where you live, the summer months can mean lazy afternoons and poolside barbecues, or holed up in dark rooms with the air conditioning cranked to maximum. Air conditioning is great, of course, but sun exposure plays a huge role in the overall temperature of your home.

You can’t just move your home to a shadier spot, but you can take steps to sun-proof your home. Here are five options to consider.

The color of your home can have a big impact on the ambient temperature inside. White paint has been shown to be very effective at reflecting the sun’s rays – and pretty much any white paint will do this (it reflects about 80% of visible light, although it will still absorb the non-visible rays that heat up surfaces). White paint is so effective that science has gone to great lengths to invent the whitest possible paint in the hopes that it could have a dramatic impact on cooling our homes. And while white paint will be the most effective, if your home currently has a darker exterior color, making it significantly lighter will have at least some impact on the amount of heat it absorbs.

Just like you paint the walls of your house, you can paint your roof with a reflective coating to bounce all that heat away. Again, white is the coolest color: a white roof can reflect 80% of the sun’s rays, keeping the roof about 50°F cooler. This means that much less heat is transferred inside. Coating your roof is a relatively easy job to do yourself, but you can also hire contractors to do it for you.