How to Keep Your Hallway Nice and Warm – Without Spending Too Much Money

Hallways are relatively annoying to keep warm. This is because they’re big. They might feel small and narrow, but the average hallway in the UK is 55m². The reason they're so big, yet feel small, is because they usually have a high ceiling, covering both the upstairs and downstairs of the house, and they often run the full length of the house, or at least from the front room to the back room.

Given their size, they’re difficult to keep warm. In general, the bigger the space, the more energy you need to use to heat it. Clearly, this can become very expensive if all you're doing is relying on the radiators to keep things warm. 

Instead, it’s better to make as many adjustments to the hallway as you can, to help increase the amount of heat that it naturally retains. Here are a few things that you can do that will really help the space:

  

1. Carpets are much better than wooden floors or tiles at keeping the heat in the room (unless you have underfloor carpets). You can carpet the hallway for relatively little, as the footprint of the space is relatively small – it’s the height that tends to make it big, not the width.

If you can’t afford a new carpet, don’t worry, you can buy rugs instead. IKEA sell metre length rugs for as little as £2.99, so we’re certain that you'll be able to find cheap rugs that will help as insulation.

2. Consider changing the radiator to a more efficient and higher heat output model. You can buy radiators online for as little as £50 and they will make a big difference to the space, and help to keep bills somewhat low.

3. Use draft excluders to eliminate any cold air that can get in around the windows and the doors. You might even consider hanging a curtain in front of the door as it adds an extra level of insulation.

4. Make sure that you have sufficient insulation in the loft and if you have cavity walls, in the walls. You would be surprised by how much of the heat in the hallway can escape through the roof when the roof is poorly ventilated.

We hope that you have found this article useful. All of these tips will help to keep your house warm while minimising the amount of money you spend on your energy bills.

Does Covering the Radiator Reduce the Heat?

There are arguments for and not for boxing in a radiator. Whilst we can all agree that draping a towel over the bathroom radiator is a bad idea, boxing it in is another matter.

It’s also clearly a bad idea to have a wall mounted radiator beneath a window with curtains overlapping. This just results in heat loss through the glass.

One improvement we can all make is to ensure there is some reflective material on the wall immediately behind all radiators. This is particularly true if it’s an outside wall.

There are a number of proprietary products for this and the best resemble aluminum bubble wrap. Apart from preventing much of the radiator heat from simply heating the wall, it also helps radiate warmth back into the room.

The object of any kind of boxing is to delay the immediate rise of heat towards the ceiling and to try and radiate it into the room as much as possible.

Although we call it a radiator it is in fact more like a convector. This is because of the basic fact that all warm air rises.

To calculate how big a radiator is needed in a room is a fairly simple operation. Most sellers of central heating equipment will have a BTU Calculator on their website.

A BTU is otherwise known as a British thermal unit and this is calculated by feeding the dimensions of the room into a set formula. Other details are also required like the size and type of windows in the room.

The type of outside brick or stone is also taken into account along with details about the floor and ceiling.

It’s important to get the correct radiator output so that it’s not blasting away all day struggling to heat the room. And equally, a radiator with too much heat output is an unnecessary extra expense.

There is a strong argument that the latest new radiators are best left uncovered as their skin is thin enough to radiate more than older conventional ones.

But there is one other argument to cover radiators and that’s when there are young children around the house.

For a BTU calculator http://www.designerradiatorsdirect.co.uk/