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Residential  buildings  significantly  increase  electricity  demand,  especially  in  developing countries.  In  this  case,  the  requirements  addressed  by  the  standards  can  ensure  the climatic adequacy of the envelope, enhance thermal performance, and promote thermal comfort   conditions   while   reducing   energy   consumption.   However,   the   criteria   for evaluating the thermal performance of a building’s envelope that is commonly adopted in energy performance standards and codes have proved to be inefficient in hot climates. The heat exchanges within buildings are dependent on solar radiation and ventilation. The purpose  of  this  article  is  to  establish  the  variables  with  the  greatest  influence  on  the thermal performance of naturally ventilated dwellings in hot climates (equatorial, tropical and  subtropical).  For  this  investigation,  a  factorial  design  was  adopted  for  sensitivity analysis. The structure of the factorial experiment defined the simulations of four patterns of  single-family  andmultifamily  residential  buildings.  We  varied  the  thermophysical properties of the external walls and roofs, the heat gain coefficient of the openings, and natural ventilation. Brazil was adopted as a basis for climate analysis, including equatorial, tropical  and  subtropical  climates.  The  analyses  were  based  on  comfort  hours  in  an adaptive  model  and  statistically  evaluated  using  Analysis  of  Variance  (ANOVA)  tests.  In general,  the  absorption  of  the  walls  and  cover,  the  thermal  transmittance  of  the  cover and the natural ventilation were the variables of greatest influence on thermal comfort in a hot climate.