We introduce a simple prescription for calculating the spectra of thermal fluctuations of temperature-dependent quantities of the form $hat{delta T}(t)=int d^3vec{r} delta T(vec{r},t) q(vec{r})$. Here $T(vec{r}, t)$ is the local temperature at location $vec{r}$ and time $t$, and $q(vec{r})$ is an arbitrary function. As an example of a possible application, we compute the spectrum of thermo-refractive coating noise in LIGO, and find a complete agreement with the previous calculation of Braginsky, Gorodetsky and Vyatchanin. Our method has computational advantage, especially for non-regular or non-symmetric geometries, and for the cases where $q(vec{r})$ is non-negligible in a significant fraction of the total volume.
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