How to Handle Heating in a Shared House (Thermostat Wars, Cold Bedrooms, and the January Bill)
It's the second week of November. One housemate is on the sofa in a hoodie, a dressing gown and a blanket, refusing on principle to touch the thermostat. Another has had the heating on since seven in the morning and genuinely doesn't understand what the problem is. Nobody has said anything out loud. The thermostat has been quietly adjusted nine times in four days.
Heating in a shared house is the rare argument that combines money and physical comfort — which is exactly why it goes badly. Everything else you split is abstract. This one you feel, all day, in your hands.
Why heating arguments are never really about the temperature
Three things make heating uniquely combustible in a shared home.
First, comfort genuinely differs between people. Being cold at 19°C isn't a character flaw or a negotiating tactic — it varies with body size, activity, medication, iron levels and how much of the day you spend sitting still.
Second, the house isn't one temperature. The bedroom above the boiler is a sauna. The north-facing room with the single-glazed window and the door onto the hallway is four degrees colder than the thermostat claims. Two people can be arguing about the same number while living in genuinely different climates.
Third, the cost arrives late. You feel warmth in November and pay for it in January, by which point nobody can remember who wanted what — only that the bill is much larger than last month's.
Nobody in your house is arguing about degrees. They're arguing about who gets to be comfortable, and who gets to be the one paying for it.
Step one: find out what heating actually costs before you negotiate
Almost every shared house argues about heating without a single person knowing the number. Pull last winter's bills, or the supplier's estimate if you're new to the place, and work out what a month of winter heating costs — then divide it by the number of people and by four weeks.
This one calculation changes the tone of the whole conversation. "Turn it down, it's expensive" is a value judgement, and people argue with value judgements. "An extra degree costs the house roughly this much a month, which is about three euros each" is a trade-off — and quite often the house looks at that number and decides it's obviously worth paying. Being warm is allowed to win. It just has to win on purpose.
Step two: set a schedule, not a thermostat war
The single biggest source of heating conflict is a thermostat anyone can change at any moment. It turns comfort into a contest of who last walked past the hallway, and it means the heating runs at times nobody actually chose.
Programme it instead, and agree four things:
- Blocks, not constant heat. A morning block and an evening block covering when people are home, plus a longer weekend window.
- One baseline for shared areas. Somewhere in the 18–21°C range for the living room — a number everyone can live with, not a number everyone loves.
- A boost anyone can use. One hour, no permission needed, no discussion. This is what makes the baseline acceptable to the person who's always cold.
- Nobody reprogrammes silently. Changing the schedule is a house decision. Boosting is not.
Bedrooms come off the shared thermostat entirely. That's what radiator valves are for: turn yours up, turn yours down, stop negotiating over a number that was never going to describe the whole house.
Step three: fix the cold room instead of heating the whole house
Here's the reframe that ends most thermostat wars: the person who wants 23°C usually isn't unreasonable. They're sitting in the coldest room in the building and asking the entire house to compensate for it.
Heating four rooms to fix one is the most expensive possible solution. Try the cheap ones first — bleed the radiators, check the valve in the cold room is fully open, block the draught under the door, hang heavier curtains, put reflective panels behind radiators on external walls. Then, if it's still cold, a small plug-in heater in that one room for a few hours a day costs a fraction of raising the whole house by two degrees.
And if the room is cold because of damp, single glazing, or a boiler that never quite works — that's not a housemate problem. Report it to the landlord in writing, keep the messages and photos, and store them wherever your house keeps the lease and the inventory. A paper trail started in October is worth a great deal in February.
Step four: split the bill in a way that still feels fair in January
Default to an even split. Heat doesn't stay in the room that generated it, individual usage can't be measured, and any attempt to bill people by the hour will collapse within a fortnight. For the vast majority of shared houses, even is both simplest and fairest.
There is one genuine exception, and it's worth naming before winter rather than after: someone who works from home every day, alone, with the heating on while everyone else is out. That's a real imbalance and it grows over a season. Fix it with a small agreed monthly amount rather than an audit — or let that person heat their own room during the day and keep the house schedule unchanged for everyone else.
Then log the bills as they land. Winter energy costs are the classic shared-house shock: three cheap summer months, then a January invoice that nobody budgeted for and everyone quietly resents. Keeping bills in something like Crew as they arrive means the heating, the top-ups and everything else the house shares sit in one running balance — so the winter bill is a number people already saw coming, and settling it is one transfer instead of a group chat argument.
Step five: have this conversation in September
The worst possible moment to agree heating rules is when one person is already cold and another has already seen the bill. By then it isn't a policy discussion — it's a grievance with a thermostat attached.
Ten minutes in early autumn covers it: the schedule, the baseline, who's fixing the cold room, and how the bill gets split. Then nobody has to have an opinion about the heating again until spring.
A well-run shared house isn't the one where everyone agrees on the perfect temperature. It's the one where the heating comes on when it should, the cold room got sorted in October, and the January bill is boring. Warm house, boring bill — that's the whole goal.
Frequently asked questions
What temperature should a shared house set the heating to?
Most health and energy guidance puts a comfortable living-room temperature at around 18 to 21°C, with bedrooms usually fine a couple of degrees cooler. In a shared house the useful move is to agree one baseline for the shared areas that everyone can live with, rather than one everyone loves, and then let people manage their own rooms with radiator valves and extra layers. A baseline plus a short boost anyone can use settles this faster than negotiating each evening.
How should housemates split the heating bill?
An even split is the default and it is the right answer for most shared houses, because heat spreads through the whole property and measuring individual usage is impossible. Weight it only when the imbalance is obvious and ongoing — one person working from home all winter while everyone else is out, or someone running a plug-in heater daily. An app like Crew helps here because each bill gets logged as it arrives and nets off against everything else the house shares, so nobody is chasing four transfers in January.
Is it cheaper to leave the heating on low all day or only turn it on when you need it?
Energy efficiency bodies generally say heating your home only when you need it is cheaper, because a house constantly loses heat to the outside and heating it all day means paying for more of that loss. The "leave it on low" advice is largely a myth for most homes, though the gap narrows in very well-insulated buildings and with heat pumps, which run best at a steady low output. For a typical rented shared house, a timer with morning and evening blocks is the safe choice.
What if one housemate works from home and uses far more heating?
Say it out loud early, because the resentment builds much faster than the cost does. The simplest fix is a small fixed winter contribution — an agreed extra amount per month from the person at home all day, rather than an attempt to meter anything. The alternative is that they heat their own room with a plug-in heater during the day and the house schedule stays as it is for everyone else.
What can you do if your bedroom is freezing and the landlord won't fix it?
Report it in writing, with photos and a thermometer reading if you can, and keep every reply — a written record is what makes a complaint to a council or tenancy body possible later. In the meantime, bleed the radiator, check the valve is fully open, block draughts at the door and window, and hang heavy curtains. If the room is cold because of damp or a failing boiler, that is a repair obligation in most rental markets, not something to solve with a thicker duvet.
