Nine Ways to Make Your Home Warmer This Winter (Without Turning Up the Heat)

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The homes we live in aren't buildings-they're systems. Each part of your home makes your life a little safer and more comfortable: The roof keeps the rain and snow out; the plumbing brings in fresh water and drains away wastewater; and our furnace, boiler, or heat pump keeps the place warm in the winter months.

But not always efficiently-or cheaply. Between November and March it's estimated that heating your home will cost you anywhere from $601 to $1,851, depending on the type of heat you have. If your house is always colder than you'd like, those numbers can get even more grim because you're constantly turning up the thermostat or running space heaters non-stop.

There are basic steps you should take if your house is always too cold, like sealing up drafts, replacing your furnace's filters, and making sure your heating system is properly maintained. But if you've done all that and still find yourself nudging the thermostat up, there are some additional simple, inexpensive (or free) steps you can take to maximize your comfort.

Change furniture arrangement

First, audit your furniture arrangements to make sure that you haven't covered or blocked a heat register or radiator. There should be at least 12 inches of clearance between heat sources and furniture to allow heat to circulate. If your couch is right up against a heat register, you're paying to cook your couch, not heat your house.

If you can't reasonably move furniture, consider installing some vent extenders or deflectors to ensure the heat makes it way into the room itself.

Buy thermal curtains

Even if you've replaced the weather stripping and taken other steps to make your windows less drafty, they can still be stealing heat from your home. Although letting in sunlight can be beneficial to the overall temperature of your house, so can preventing heat loss, so consider investing in a set of thermal curtains. On sunny days, open them up to let in the sun's warmth. When you feel a chill, close them to stop heat loss through your windows.

Place foil behind radiators

Placing reflective material like foil behind your radiators can help maximize their effectiveness; the foil will bounce the heat into the room instead of letting it get absorbed into the wall. This works best in small spaces, where you might really feel the difference, but it's so cheap and easy to do it's worth trying throughout the house.

Add outlet insulators

The power outlets and light switches on your walls are essentially holes in your house that can let cold air in. Install plate insulators behind the wall plates to stop those drafts-it's cheap, takes a few minutes to install, and can make a real difference.

Block the chimney

If you have a fireplace with a chimney in your home, inserting a fireplace plug can stop cold air from traveling down into your house (which can happen even with the damper closed). If you don't want to pay for a plug or can't use one for some reason, blocking off your fireplace with a cover can also be an effective way to stop drafts.

Buy duct booster fans

A duct booster fan inserts into one of your HVAC system's registers, boosting the airflow coming out of it. They're relatively easy to install and can noticeably increase the effectiveness of both your cooling and heating. If your house is cold and you can barely feel the air coming out of one or more of your heat registers, a booster fan might be the solution.

Landscape for sun

If your home has a lot of trees and other landscaping that block the sun, it's probably a shady paradise in the summer-but that's probably contributing to the frigid feel in the winter. Trimming back trees and other growth and removing other landscaping features that create shade can give it more exposure to the sun, making your home warmer overall.

Don't forget about rugs

Your floors are responsible for a lot of heat loss, especially floors over basements or crawl spaces (and especially if the crawl space or basement isn't insulated). Not only can a cold floor make the lower area of the room feel cold, it also turns your feet into little blocks of ice. Adding area rugs can help tremendously. Rugs can block some of the cold air seeping up from below, and they'll also insulate your body from the cold floor, helping to make the house feel warmer overall. (Just be careful not to cover a heat register.)

Reverse ceiling fans

Did you reverse your ceiling fans for the winter? Are you running them? Running ceiling fans clockwise pulls cold air up, pushing warm air down. It's easy to do and will have a noticeable impact both on how your home feels and how much it costs to feel that way.