Heat adaptation is critical to climate resilience in tropical cities where heat is not an episodic hazard but a chronic feature of everyday life. Adaptive capacity has been studied through the lenses of resources, risk perceptions, or structural systems, while the intersection between individuals and households - where everyday adaptation happens - remains underexamined. This research investigates domestic cooling practices of households living in high-rise apartments in Singapore.


A mixed-method design was used integrating a population survey with environmental audits (N = 1,013 participants from 416 households) and a 2-week ethnographic profiling study (N = 60 participants from 39 households). Quantitatively, multi-level multinomial logistic regressions tested how individual factors, household characteristics, and dwelling attributes shape domestic cooling practices and thermal comfort; qualitatively, deductive thematic coding analysed household narratives and routines.


We found stronger within-household convergence for infrastructural actions (e.g., opening windows, drawing blinds) and greater divergence for personal tactics (e.g., showers, attire adjustments), reflecting coordination demands and idiosyncratic routines. Cooling practices are shaped by negotiation and conflicts, socio-cultural beliefs and norms, and financial constraints, producing differentiated thermal comfort levels among cohabitants. Comfort levels are further conditioned by spatial form - from fixed infrastructural features (e.g., window placement) to movable elements (e.g., clutter). Notable, there was evidence of deliberate self-regulation, with many participants framing warmth and sweating as acceptable, signalling active engagement with heat as part of building tolerance beyond reactive cooling countermeasures.


We advance a relational model of adaptive capacity in which thermal comfort is co-produced by individuals and cohabitants within dwelling affordances. In this way, intra-household trust and communication are themselves adaptive resources. Practically, this points beyond engineered climate control and towards enabling shared thermal comfort through guidance on flexible and effective cooling, making ventilation pathways legible and usable, and supporting safe warm exposure that sustains acclimatization.