How to Keep the Upstairs Rooms Warmer in the Winter

Check your home to make sure it is insulated properly to keep valuable heat from escaping before it can rise to upstairs rooms. Call a professional heating, ventilation and cooling specialist who can analyze your ventilation needs and go over options for improvement that fit within your budget.

Place your hand over upstairs windows to ensure that chilly air isn’t seeping in from outside. If it is, install double-paned storm windows to eliminate drafts. If this isn’t in your budget, install a plastic insulation window shrink kit to fit over the window. Hang heavy drapes around your window to reduce residual drafts. During sunny days, however, leave drapes open to allow natural sunlight to help heat your room.

Flip the switch on the base of your ceiling fan to reverse the direction from counterclockwise to clockwise. The clockwise direction pulls warm air up from the floor and pushes it across the ceiling and down the walls, forcing it to circulate with cooler air in the room and even the overall temperature. Keep the fan on the lowest setting to prevent a draft.

Insulate floors in upstairs rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting or large area rugs to keep heat from seeping into the floor.

Close off upstairs rooms you don’t use, such as guest rooms or rooms for grown children living away from home. Seal off vents to these rooms, if possible, and keep the doors shut. This leaves more heat available for rooms you frequent.

Use space heaters in upstairs rooms for additional radiant heat. Turn off space heaters when you leave the room, to save energy.

Keep doors open to rooms you’re using, to allow heat to circulate into the room from other areas of the house.