Box air conditioners are everywhere here in North Queensland. Almost all of the old Queenslanders have been fitted out with them and box air conditioners are an inexpensive way to add air conditioning to your house.

One downside to box air conditioners is that they are ugly looking things, especially if you can see them from the road down the side of the house, or worse, on the front of the house.

On one side of our house the box air conditioners for the kids rooms are pretty well hidden by the trees. You actually have to try to see them, so I’m not too worried about them.

On the left side of our house though the box air conditioner sticks out like a sore thumb (as you can see above). This room will eventually be our office and because it is at the front of the house it is really quite obvious.

Even though split air conditioners are become more common box air conditioners are still being installed in a lot of new homes. One of these new homes that we saw had a box air conditioner visible right from the front of the house, so they built a simple slotted box and installed that around it (see the photo on the right).

Although it doesn’t actually conceal the air conditioner, it at least helps it to blend in a lot more with the rest of the house. I might do something like this with ours, or we might wait to see if the new window hoods we are putting on the house will help to hide it. I hope that this is the case, but we will see.