4 Ways to Keep Your Home Warm This Winter

When you are in the process of updating your home, style can sometimes take precedence over comfort. As winter is nearly upon us, some of you may have already made some upgrades to your home across the year, or perhaps like us, made a major investment in renovating your property from top to bottom. Despite this, the home can often feel cold in the early winter mornings, and we all want to ensure we have a nice warm home to greet us as we wake. With Christmas around the corner, you don’t necessarily want to be spending huge amounts on updating your home. With this in mind, here are four ways to keep your home warmer for less this winter.

When you’re finished here, why not check out our recent article on getting your home winter ready.

4 Steps to a Warmer Home This Winter

1. Improve Your Insulation

Approximately 50% of heat is lost through the roof and walls, and while this can be fixed by loft and cavity wall insulation, this can be a great expense at this time of the year. Insulation is something we placed a great emphasis on during our new build, with 200mm cavity walls and pumped insulation helping us heat our home for less (well, fingers crossed). In our old home we got an insulation grant through Power NI, and while this deal is no longer available, there are still some grant options available for heating homes in Northern Ireland which would be worth exploring. Visit homesealni.co.uk for more information.

If you are looking to insulate your home, but on the cheaper side, it’s time to start playing with fabrics! Curtains are a very good way to insulate your home. During the day, keep them open so all of the heat from the sun can come into the house, and before it gets dark, shut the curtains, and you’ve got a natural insulator. You can take this mindset and apply it to pretty much anything, from rolling up an unused curtain as a draught excluder, getting a wool carpet so that the warmth is retained beneath your feet, or you can wrap up warm and provide natural insulation yourself. We opted for underfloor heating in most of our downstairs but the rooms that we didn’t put underfloor, we have carpeted and you can really feel the difference on your feet as the mornings get colder.

2. Check For Mini Draughts

If you put the heating on all the time but still find that it disappears as soon as you’ve turned it off, the culprit may very well be a draught that you hadn’t noticed before. A very good example of a mini draught is from the letterbox. If you’ve got an old chunky letter box with thin material covering it, this could be where all of your heat is disappearing. Likewise, cat flaps, doggy doors, or any pet access doors could be adding to your heating bill. Try to block these openings where possible during the winter months, and consider investing in some draught excluders for your doors.

3. Turn The Dial Down

If you are looking to reduce your heating bill in the winter months, you may want to turn the thermostat down by 1 degree C, as this can reduce your heating bill by up to 10%. While it may sound ludicrous to turn the heating down, if you do this in conjunction with finding the source of draughts and insulating properly, you will have a warmer home. We have our thermostat set and heating on a timer to ensure we aren’t heating the house when not required, ensuring we will make a saving during the cooler winter months. If you don’t have a thermostat in your home, chat to a plumber or electrician to learn more.

4. Think About Circulation

If you move your couch closer to the radiators because it’s getting colder, you may be neglecting the rest of your house, heat wise. Your radiators need to be free from blockage and obstruction. While it’s quicker to dry clothes on the radiator, you’re not letting the heat escape and form a convection current around each room. And when thinking about circulating the air, if you don’t keep your doors closed already, make sure you do! During the winter months, you need to do all you can to keep the heat in your rooms, and not let it escape. If you only spend time in a couple of rooms, ensure the warm air can easily circulate around them.

Save Energy, Stay Warm

Keeping your home warm doesn’t have to be expensive, nor does it have to be incredibly time-consuming. If you are dreading coming home from work and feeling the chill in the air, in addition to these suggestions, learn how to program your heater! It’s surprising how many people have no idea how to do this.

Have you got any additional home heating tips for the winter to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Until next time, wrap up and stay warm 😀

Helen, Nial & Lewis