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When the house feels chilly, the instinct is to nudge the thermostat up. But warmth is partly temperature and partly sensation, and sensation is often cheaper to address than temperature: what you touch, the light you live in, and the places heat leaks out. The most cost-effective move of all is to warm yourself directly while keeping the room at a sensible baseline; our guide to feeling warmer without turning up the heating covers the how.
That is what this edit is for: eight things for the evenings, each chosen because it warms a person rather than a whole house. Three of them are ours (our dehumidifier is the earlier model); the rest are researched picks from our guides, and every card below shows Amazon’s live price.
How we chose
Each pick had to warm a person or stop heat escaping for less than it costs to heat a room, so we worked out its running cost at the 26.32p cap before it went in. The hot water bottle, the door seal and the dehumidifier are ours; the blankets, throw, lamp and foil are researched picks from our guides, not first-hand reviews. Every pick was new and in stock when we published. How we research
The one to buy
If you buy one thing from this edit, make it a heated underblanket.
About 21p for a full eight-hour night, or roughly £38 over a whole winter. A 2kW fan heater run for the same hours would cost about £760.
Dreamland Cosy Dreamer, double
Up to temperature in about five minutes, a controller for each side with six settings, and a 1-, 3- or 9-hour timer. More in our electric blanket guide.
Dreamland Cosy Dreamer Electric Blanket, Double Size, 150 x 137cm
For a single bed
The cheapest sensible way into a warm bed. It ties to the mattress so it doesn’t rumple, and goes in the machine at 30°C once the control is detached.
Beurer TS 15 heated underblanket
Beurer TS 15 Heated Underblanket, with safety automatic switch-off made of soft fleece and with 3 temperature settings, easy fixation on bed and mattress, washable at 30⁰, 150 x 80 cm, Green
In bed, for pennies
A proper 2-litre rubber bottle that comes with its faux fur cover, and Ram say it is made to BS 1970:2012. The budget end done properly.
Ram Large Cosy 2L hot water bottle
Ram® Large Cosy 2L Litre Rubber Hot Water Bottle with Faux Fluffy Cover Pink
On the sofa
Our own heated throw is the photo at the top of this page; we read in bed under it, too. This is the one our guide recommends.
Something to put over you rather than under. Nine heat settings, and it shuts itself off after two hours, which tells you what it is for: an evening on the sofa, not a night in bed.
Silentnight Comfort Control heated throw
Silentnight Comfort Control Heated Throw Blanket - Luxury Fleece Electric Heated Blanket for Sofa Bed with 9 Heat Settings, Fast Heat-up and Safety Shut Off - Machine Washable - 120x160cm, Olive Green
Warm light
Cool overhead light can make a room feel colder. Put a warm lamp where the room drops off into shadow: the corner by the sofa, or behind a chair.
Aooshine touch-control table lamp
Aooshine Bedside Lamps, Touch Control Table Lamp with USB A+C Charging Port | Lamps 3 Way Dimmable, for Bedroom Living Room, Grey Fabric Shade, Warm Light, 1.5m Cable, Silver (LED Bulb Included)
Stop the heat leaks
Draughts are comfort thieves. Fix the room you sit in most first.
A self-adhesive silicone strip for the bottom of a door. Ours is on an internal door in the flat; the door still clears the carpet, and there is noticeably less draught there.
Vellure door draught excluder strip
Vellure® Premium Door Draft Excluder Strip - Door Seal for Energy Saving - Quick and Easy Installation - Draught Excluder for Bottom of Door - Ideal for Keeping Out Cold
Behind the radiator
If a radiator is on an external wall, reflector foil behind it pushes more warmth back into the room instead of letting it soak into the wall.
Radiator reflector foil, 5m roll
Radiator Foil Reflector Roll 5m x 60cm – Heat Reflective Radiator Foil Panels and Insulation Sheet – Radiator Reflector Foil for Behind Radiators – Thermal Radiator Insulation Includes Sticky Pads
Against the damp
Damp air feels colder than dry air at the same temperature, so a cold, clammy room may need drying before it needs heating.
We bought a 20-litre duux Bora in December 2023 and it has run through three winters. It lives in the living and dining room, and on washing days it moves into the spare room, where it takes laundry from seven or eight hours to dry to three or four.
Ours is discontinued. This is the current Bora 20L, which we haven’t run; the whole story is in our duux Bora review.
duux Bora 20L (DXDH20UK)
Duux Bora Smart Dehumidifier 20L | Clothes Drying Mode | Quiet Mark Certified | Energy Efficient Dehumidifier for Home | Carbon Filter | Large 4L Water Tank | Humidity Sensor | DXDH20UK
What it costs to run
At 26.32p a unit, the price cap from 1 October 2026.
21pa night
Electric blanket, 100W for eight hours
1–2pan hour
Heated throw, 50–80W on the sofa
10.5pan hour
Dehumidifier, 400W flat out; its humidistat cycles it, so less in practice
53pan hour
2kW fan heater, for comparison
The full sums for every appliance are in our Running Costs Index, and the cheapest ways to heat a room are in which electric heating is cheapest to run.
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