How to reduce heat loss through your floor

The type of flooring you have can greatly impact how much heat you lose during colder months. Our advice is that a high tog rated, insulated floor will make your home feel warmer and reduce draughts, so you'll be able to save money on your energy bills and keep your room feeling cosy. 

We’ll take you through how much heat you could be losing through your floor, sharing the different flooring types that will work best to reduce heat loss. We’ll also dive into how to reduce heat loss in the home in other ways, helping you trap valuable heat as the winter months close in. 

In this guide:

• How much heat is lost through your floor?
• How to reduce heat loss through your floor
• Other ways to reduce heat loss at home

How much heat is lost through your floor?

It may surprise you to know, on average, 10-20% of heat loss occurs through your floors – this is in addition to losing heat through your ceilings, windows, and doors, not to mention open fireplaces too. But this percentage can be much higher if you don’t have the correct flooring or if you don’t have insulation in your home.

Watch the video below to find out how you can reduce the heat you’re losing through your floor and warm up your home:

How to reduce heat loss through your floor

When it comes to keeping the heat inside your home, there are plenty of different things you can do, but one of the most important is ensuring your flooring has a high tog rating and is fitted correctly. We can arrange fitting with the best professional fitters giving you peace of mind for years to come that you’re not losing any heat from poorly fitted flooring.

Here are a few helpful solutions you can try to reduce heat loss through your floor this winter: 

Carpet

There’s no doubt carpet is one of the best types of flooring to reduce energy costs. Carpet is a natural source of insulation, making your home more energy efficient by retaining more heat. When you walk on a carpet, warm air gets trapped just above its surface, reducing draughts, and making you feel warmer. This helps to trap the warm air in the room for longer and having more carpeted rooms in your home brings you the greatest benefit.

It's thought that wool carpets are the most effective thermal insulators, as wool fibres not only retain their pile height for a longer period (which is essential for retaining insulation) but also feel warm and firm underfoot, helping you feel cosier.

We wouldn’t advise including carpet in every room in your home. We don’t recommend having carpeted kitchens or bathrooms, so for rooms that can’t be carpeted, we recommend using a smooth flooring with the correct underlay. 

Underlay

Underlay is a layer of material that sits underneath your flooring and creates a barrier between your subfloor and flooring. It comes in different thicknesses, materials, and tog ratings. The underlay you choose should be matched to the layer above. If your underlay has a high tog rating it will prevent heat from escaping through the floor, while also providing exceptional comfort under a carpet and warmth under a smooth floor. 

You can add underlay underneath laminate flooring and engineered wood, but it’s not recommended to add underlay underneath vinyl flooring, as vinyl floors usually have a base layer of foam or felt back that provides extra softness and warmth underfoot, so they don't need an underlay. This makes them a great value choice for larger rooms like kitchens.

Underfloor heating

Underfloor heating acts like a big storage heater underneath your flooring – it evenly distributes heat across the whole room and is a great way of heating your room too. Because your flooring has become the heat emitter instead of radiators that sit above the floor, you won’t lose heat through your flooring. They also heat other elements of your home and make them warmer, as opposed to radiators which send heat upwards towards your ceiling and don’t easily circulate heat through the room. 

Fitting underfloor heating is a specialist job and is usually more suitable for newbuild homes. Unless you’re renovating, it’s not necessarily recommended if you have an older property. Check out our guide to which flooring works best with underfloor heating to find out if underfloor heating could be the solution for you. 

How to reduce heat loss through a concrete floor

If you have a garage with a concrete floor that makes the space feel cold, particularly in winter, you can help reduce heat loss by laying insulated flooring such as vinyl, laminate, or luxury vinyl tile. Insulating concrete with thermal flooring options is a quick and easy way to help improve temperature regulation, moisture control and improve comfort underfoot. It’s worth pointing out this is just for garages used for storage, not a garage to park a car in!

Other ways to reduce heat loss at home

Now you’ve addressed your flooring to make sure you’re not losing precious heat, don’t stop there! From helpful habits to essential insulation, it’s also worth checking that you’ve covered how to prevent heat loss in your house in all the other ways.

We have a whole guide on how to warm up a cold room in winter, but here are our top tips for reducing heat loss in the home:

• Check your wall and loft insulation – It may seem obvious, but like your flooring, good heat retention starts from the very foundation of your home. Make sure your home is heat-efficient with adequate wall and loft insulation. This could be more pressing if you have an older home!
• Start draught proofing – Make sure you’ve done your due diligence by combating draughts around your home, including windows, gaps in suspended floors, and cracks in the walls. Look for gaps and cracks around your home and listen for whistling noises where air could be sneaking in. Professional draught proofers can help set you up with the right solutions, but you can often fix these yourself too.
• Invest in heat-efficient windows – Replacing your windows could be something you’re putting off, and we’d understand why. Upgrading to more energy-efficient windows can be a major expense, but triple-glazed windows can help save up to 50% more heat than double-glazed windows¹
• Don’t forget pipe insulation – Making sure your pipes are insulated can help make sure your home is as energy efficient as possible, so don’t overlook this helpful step!
• Buy seasonal winter curtains – If your windows tend to draw heat out of your room, consider investing in thick and insulating winter curtains that you put up every year when temperatures begin to drop. Think of it like swapping your winter bedding. By switching up your curtains seasonally, not only will this help prevent your house from losing heat, but it’s a great opportunity to refresh your home decor for the winter season too. Adding thermal blinds will also help.
• Avoid blocking your radiators with furniture – Move your furniture away from radiators to allow the hot air to circulate around the room more.
• Keep rooms cosy by closing doors – Keep the door closed in rooms where the heat is needed and try using draught excluders for extra strength draught reduction.
• Let the sun heat your home – If the sun comes into a particular room during the day, allow it to naturally heat the room, then close the curtains at night to prevent heat from escaping through the windows. Even if no one is sleeping in or using the room, this simple daily routine could help seal in warmth throughout your home.
• Decorate with rugs to keep it toasty – Rugs can help keep a room cosy if you have smooth flooring – try our carpet whipping service to make rugs out of your favourite Tapi carpets, or discover how to layer rugs for an even cosier feel. 

From thermal flooring to helpful home improvements, hopefully you now feel more confident about how to reduce heat loss in your house. If you want to upgrade your carpet or underlay to one of our higher tog options, why not pop into your local Tapi store to see what carpet options you love the most? Or read more about how to insulate your floors in the Ideas Hub.