Why are empty rooms colder than those with furniture? The exact rate at which air heats up is similar to how it cools down. The presence of furniture or other objects in a room help in the absorption of heat and re-radiation into the air bringing more warmth.
So, does furniture make a room warmer? Furniture tends to store heat and makes your room feel warmer even if there’s no sunshine or heat applied. All this is thanks to furniture’s high heat absorbance and re-radiation nature.
How Furniture Makes a Room Warmer
Air in an empty room is repeatedly dispersed in the air, making it cold. But if you fill your room with carpets, curtains, and furniture, more heat is stored, giving extra warmth even in winter.
So you may wonder, does furniture produce heat? No, it stores and re-radiates heat into the air, thus keeping the room temperature warm.
How to Make a Room Warmer
You can use two ways to warm your home: elements or objects in the room and electricity. This article emphasizes the non-heating methods that can warm your place. This goes a long way in helping you cut down on energy costs.
Sunlight
Letting in enough light and sunshine through your window to warm the room is more effortless and cost-free than using room heaters. To enhance the efficiency of the window panes, they should always be clean and streak-free.
Also, open the blinds whenever there’s sunshine to allow more light. The sun’s rays warm up the house and enable radiation of the heat energy absorbed for warmer nights.
Heavy curtains and Carpets
Leaving your floors naked with no covering makes heat get lost quickly. Floors with carpets or rugs keep the house warm and add to your interior décor.
Heavy curtains prevent the infusion of cold air from the outside into the house. However, the thick nature of the curtains may not allow light during the day; they can be opened in the morning and closed at night.
For glazed windows, you can opt for thermal-lined or blackout curtains. These curtains are made specifically to keep cold air out and maintain the air inside. Also, you won’t feel the usual chilly mornings if you switch the heating system overnight.
Besides, lined curtains though expensive, are a worthy investment. The curtains deliver ultimate privacy and offer temperature control by keeping the room cool in summer or warm in winter.
Ceiling fan
A ceiling fan keeps your room cool during hot summers. But do you know the same fan can keep your room warm during winter? There’s a button on the fan’s blades that, if pressed, makes it turn anticlockwise instead of going in a clockwise direction.
The anticlockwise rotation helps redistribute warm air around the ceiling instead of drawing it back down. You can set the fan to rotate at high speed to increase airflow. This makes your room feel warmer and even makes the heating system warm the room quickly when turned on.
Furniture
Apart from the heat absorption capability of furniture, they should be put in a way that they are far from windows, external walls, doors, or heating sources. This gives you more warmth when relaxing than how you’d feel if the chairs or coaches were next to the mentioned sources that cool air.
While some people find it satisfying to place furniture near heat sources such as radiators, this inhibits warm airflow. Therefore, the boiler will work tirelessly to warm your home, resulting in high heating bills.
Windows
Windows allow natural light into your home but can also bring cold air when left open in late evenings. You may seal air leaks through windows with caulk or weather stripping, but heavy curtains or complete insulation are important in freezing temperatures. Finally, timely pulling of the draperies or curtains helps to minimize heat loss.
Seal-off all openings
As you prepare for the cold seasons, you may need to seal off any cracks in the doors and windows. Cracks, however small they may look, allow some cold air in the room, thus slightly dropping the inside temperature. You can use caulk or foam insulation to fill in the cracks. But if it’s already winter and you didn’t self-prepare, you can try short-term options like filling the gaps with rugs or blankets.
Close all doors and windows as early as 4 p.m. to ensure all absorbed heat doesn’t leave the house. Similarly, if you have many rooms, close doors to the unused rooms to avoid heat dispersion to unnecessary areas.
Unused chimneys connected to the living room with no wood burner are an open space to let heat out. Use a special chimney balloon or blanket to block the chimney to prevent air from coming in or out.
Do Carpets Change Room Temperature?
Bare floors expose your room to losing up to 10% heat energy. Using carpets on the floor makes your feet feel warm and provides insulation by reducing the heat lost from the floor. Hence, carpets alter the room temperature considerably by making it warmer than in rooms with no carpets.
Can Furniture Absorb Heat?
As discussed above, furniture absorbs more heat during the day than you can imagine and retains the heat for long periods. For example, a fully furnished room will stay warmer despite the change in the temperature or way long after turning off the heating system.
Despite the room-warming benefits of furniture, décor artifacts, carpets, or rugs, don’t overdo them. More clutter limits airflow and makes the room hotter instead of making it warm. This makes you uncomfortable and may interrupt your sleep.
Energy costs have increasingly risen over the years, making it hard for most households to keep their homes warm using electric heaters or radiators. This has led some people to find an alternative to keeping their homes warmer during cold seasons. The methods include insulating the floors with rugs, furnishing the rooms with furniture, changing the direction of the ceiling fan, and allowing in as much sunlight as possible.