Preparing your home for winter: expert tips on saving energy

Winter has a way of sneaking up on a house. One cold snap and the bedroom feels like a tent, the boiler coughs, and the meter begins its quiet spin. Energy bills don’t whisper any more, they shout. The good news: a few well‑aimed changes before the first frost can cut that noise. This is your head start.

I watched a neighbour wedge a rolled towel under his door, steam fogging the glass as his radiators clicked into life, and thought of all the warmth threading itself out through small gaps. Somewhere upstairs, a window didn’t quite meet its frame, and down by the skirting boards a faint draught tickled my ankles. I wanted to find the leaks before the cold found me. The cheapest heat is made before winter arrives.

Seal the shell: stop heat leaks first

Warm air is a restless thing, and a typical British home gives it plenty of ways to escape. The fastest gains often come from boring places: loft hatches, letterboxes, cat flaps, keyholes, the thin line where a pipe slips through a wall. A candle flame tells the truth about draughts, but so does your skin, and a chilly edge near a sash cord can be as revealing as a thermal camera. The goal is simple: **shut the gaps** that shouldn’t be open, and keep the ones that must be open under control.

I stood in a semi in Leeds where the front room had been “cosy at last” since September because of three cheap fixes: a brush strip on the letterbox, a compressible seal around the loft hatch, and a secondary pane clipped behind a rattly sash. The owners said the hallway no longer felt like a wind tunnel, the boiler ran less like a drum solo, and the morning condensation eased off. *Small tweaks, big comfort.* A degree on the thermostat now went further, and they’d stopped turning it up in frustration every time the wind picked up.

There’s a simple logic behind it. Hot air rises and finds its way out at the top of the house, pulling in cold air lower down in a silent loop, so plugging the top and softening the bottom slows the whole cycle. Think of your home as a breathable coat: you want controlled ventilation, not random holes that whistle. Keep trickle vents and extractor fans doing their job in kitchens and bathrooms, then silence the uninvited draughts under doors and through unsealed floorboards, because moisture needs a way out while warmth needs a reason to stay.

Control the heat: smarter settings, smaller bills

Once the fabric holds its warmth, the next win is in how you run your kit. Set the thermostat lower and sharper, with rooms you use at **18–19°C** and bedrooms cooler, then fit or fine‑tune TRVs so you’re not heating a hallway like a sauna. If you’ve a condensing boiler, the hidden gem is this: **lower your boiler flow temperature** to around 55–60°C so it condenses efficiently and sips less gas while delivering steady, comfortable heat. It’s a quiet change that feels like someone smoothed the edges off winter.

People love a big switch, but winter rewards light touches done regularly: bleeding radiators so they heat fully, setting the programmer to match your real routine, closing curtains at dusk with a gentle tuck behind the radiator shelf. Let’s be honest: nobody really does that every day. We’ve all had that moment when you forget the timer and come home to a house that’s been burning warmth into empty rooms, which is why a smart thermostat with geofencing or simple schedules can be worth more than its price tag in saved kilowatt‑hours and fewer little regrets.

Comfort is personal, and control helps you find it without overspending. Zone your home if you can afford it, or fake a zone by closing doors and letting rarely used rooms idle, because heat behaves better in defined spaces and routines stick when they feel natural rather than strict.

“Heat what you use, when you use it, at the lowest comfortable temperature, and the bills will follow,” an energy assessor told me, tapping a TRV like a metronome. “The clever bit is making that effortless.”

• Close heavy curtains at dusk and add linings; tuck them above radiators so heat isn’t trapped.
• Bleed radiators, balance the system, and clear furniture from in front of them so heat can circulate.
• Fit a chimney balloon in unused fireplaces, and add a letterbox brush to stop whistling gaps.
• Lag hot‑water pipes and add a cylinder jacket; hot water stays hot, less energy is wasted.
• Swap halogens for LEDs; lighting savings are small per bulb but stack up across a winter.

Think seasonal: habits that carry you through winter

Winter‑ready homes are less a collection of gadgets than a way of moving through the season with intent. Dry laundry in one well‑ventilated room so moisture doesn’t wander, set a weekly five‑minute “home MOT” to walk the house and feel for new draughts, and keep a simple log of thermostat tweaks and how they felt, because you’ll forget by January what seemed obvious in November. A thicker rug on a timber floor can change how you experience the room, and a door you close as a rule can feel like a new wall, which is a quiet kind of magic worth sharing.

FAQ :

• What’s the best temperature to set my thermostat?Most households feel comfortable at 18–19°C in living spaces, with bedrooms cooler; start there for a week and adjust by 0.5°C until it feels right.
• Is it cheaper to leave the heating on low all day?In a typical home, heating only when needed is more economical, because constant low heat still loses energy through the building fabric.
• How do I find hidden draughts quickly?Walk slowly with a lit incense stick or a damp hand on a breezy day, check skirting lines and loft hatches, then add seals or brush strips where you feel movement.
• Should I turn down my boiler flow temperature?If you have a condensing boiler and radiators, reducing flow to around 55–60°C can improve efficiency, though very cold snaps may need a brief bump.
• Do smart thermostats actually save money?They can, by matching heat to your routine and reducing overshoot; savings vary with how you live, but fewer empty‑house hours usually means a lower bill.