Warm Up Your Home
There are many ways to warm up when the cold weather hits – hot coffee or chocolate, warm blankets and woolen sweaters, crackling fires in the fireplace. When talking home warmth, modifications that provide energy efficiency and give your heater some assistance are great considerations. There are lots of remodeling strategies that will give rooms a feeling of warmth – literally and figuratively.
Fireplaces are an obvious addition to consider for family room renovations. They make a home feel cozy and welcoming, and provide a gathering space for people. Fireplaces run the gamut from full-wall brick or stone to gas or electric inserts with decorative hearths and screens. A gas or electric fireplace is fabulous for providing extra heat for a big space or an area that always seems cold in the winter. They’re also great in a master suite or sitting room, adding warmth and even a little romance.
Heated flooring is another option to warm up your home. Most heated flooring uses radiant heat in one of three types: radiant air, electric or hot water. Wet installations use large thermal concrete slabs over a wooden subfloor. Dry installations sandwich the radiant floor tubing between two layers of plywood. Either installation is then covered by tile, linoleum, carpeting or wood. Ceramic tile is most common because it conducts heat well and provides thermal storage. According to the Department of Energy website, radiant heating is more efficient than both baseboard and forced air heating because it eliminates heat loss through ducts. Heated flooring is quite expensive to install, but will save money on heating bills in the long run. Consider heated flooring for bathroom, kitchen or master suite remodeling.
Finally, simply adding carpeting to a room can warm it up. Carpeting takes the edge off of a cold floor and seems to wrap you in a big, plush hug when you step in the room. Whether it’s wall-to-wall or a thick area rug, the carpeting eliminates the feeling of a cool floor.