© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd. The temperature dependence of the laser-induced damage threshold on optical coatings was studied in detail for laser pulses from 123 K to 473 K at different temperatures. The laser-induced damage threshold increased with decreasing temperatures when we tested long pulses (200 ps and 4 ns). The temperature dependence, however, was reversed for pulses shorter than a few picoseconds (100 fs testing). We propose a scaling model with a flowchart that includes three separate processes: free-electron generation, electron multiplication, and electron heating. Furthermore, we calculated the temperature dependence of laser-induced damage thresholds at different temperatures. Our calculation results agreed well with the experimental results.