How do I stay warm this winter without a huge bill?

Two answers, because the cold you walk through and the cold you live in are different problems. Dress in layers of anything but cotton; heat the house lower, never off.

On your body: layers, and no cotton. What actually keeps you warm outside starts by clearing the thing almost everybody has been told: you do not lose most of your body heat through your head. The figure comes from studying people in Arctic survival suits with only their heads exposed, so it is a fact about the suit. A hat is still cheap, but if you are choosing between a hat and a coat, the coat wins. What keeps you warm is several thin layers of anything except cotton, loose enough that your blood can move, with something windproof outside. Cotton holds your sweat and melted snow and stays wet, and wet fabric pulls heat out faster than bare skin; jeans, most cheap socks and most T-shirts under a coat are cotton. Wool or synthetic for the layer touching you and for socks. The counterintuitive one: tight clothing makes you colder, because squeezed hands and feet get less blood, so the answer to cold feet is often thinner socks or a bigger boot, not another sock. Do not let yourself sweat; take a layer off before you are damp. Standing on concrete pulls heat out by contact, and a scrap of cardboard or foam underfoot was one outdoor worker’s single biggest change. The page’s safety line: skin gone white or greyish and hard or numb is frostbite; get indoors, warm it with warm, not hot, water or body heat, never a heating pad, stove or rubbing, and have it looked at afterwards.

In the house: down, never off. Program the thermostat down, never off is two people’s independent rule. The hours you are at work and asleep are a third to a half of the week; heat them a few degrees less on a schedule and the bill notices while you mostly do not. The second half is the one that costs people: never off. Waiting for freezing weather to touch the heat is how pipes burst, and a burst pipe erases years of thermostat savings in one afternoon; homes kept too cold also grow mould. Leaving for the winter? is the same lesson for an empty house. Someone planning to shut everything off for five months and save about eleven hundred dollars ended up draining the pipes, unplugging everything and holding the heat around fifty degrees, because the house they wanted to come home to was worth more than the saving. The gas question there resolves once you see two houses talking: fully drained and unheated, turn the gas off at the line; held at fifty by a gas furnace, the gas stays on.

Wood, only if the wood is nearly free. Wood heat is cheap only if you burn it right is blunt: the people who save real money cut fallen wood on their own land or take dead trees off public land on a cheap permit; buy it cut, split and delivered and most of the saving is gone, before the saw, splitter, stove and chimney. Its safety lines matter more than its economics: never burn treated, painted or glued wood, pressure-treated lumber, old decking, plywood, chipboard, because burned they give off real poisons; burn only wood dried six months to a year, and sweep the chimney yearly, because wet wood and a dirty flue build the tarry creosote that starts chimney fires; a closed stove rather than an open fireplace, which sends most of its heat up the chimney; the woodpile a few feet from the house, off the ground and covered; and a smoke alarm and a carbon-monoxide alarm wherever you burn. The page carries the argument about whether a modern stove burns clean, and what decides it is your topography, the wind and how near your neighbours are.

In bed: warm it before you get in with a heated pad or blanket that is less than ten years old and undamaged, and switch it off and unplug it before you get in, unless its label says it is made to stay on all night. Warm the bed before you get into it starts from the arithmetic. Many people say a heated blanket or pad costs less than a space heater, because it warms your body directly and does not heat the air around you. One person puts a blanket at about 100 watts and a space heater at about 1,500; some people give a range of 80 to 200 watts for blankets. At those figures, three hours of a 100-watt blanket uses 0.3 kilowatt-hours and three hours of a 1,500-watt heater uses 4.5, which is fifteen times as much. In September 2026 a UK consumer-testing group put electric blankets at roughly 2p to 6p an hour and electric heaters at roughly 8p to 76p an hour. It warms the bed, not you walking about, and it saves money only if you let something else go lower; one person points out that if your heating or electricity is included in your rent, you will not see the saving.

The page’s safety line is long and belongs here whole. Heated blankets and pads can start fires and burn skin. Do not use one that is more than ten years old, is second-hand, or shows frayed fabric, scorch marks, bare wires, a damaged cord, a buzzing or hot control, or a burning smell: replace it (Electrical Safety First and London Fire Brigade, UK). Unplug it before you get into bed unless it has a thermostat control and automatic shut-off made for all-night use. Do not tuck an electric blanket in, fold it, or put anything on top of it while it is on (US Consumer Product Safety Commission), and never use a hot water bottle with one (Electrical Safety First, London Fire Brigade, an NHS trust). Do not use one for a baby, on an adjustable bed, or for anyone who cannot feel heat well, for example because of nerve damage (Electrical Safety First). London Fire Brigade also says not to use one with an air-flow pressure-relief mattress or with emollient creams. One person also says not to use one for anyone who could not get out of bed if there were a fire. Keep a working smoke alarm in the bedroom. If it catches fire, do not fight it: get out, stay out and call 911 in the US or 999 in the UK, or your local emergency number elsewhere. And do not turn the heating down to save money if you are 65 or over, have heart or lung disease or find it hard to move about: an NHS trust says to keep your home at least 18C (65F), and the US National Institute on Aging advises older adults to keep it at 68 to 70F. Many people say the way to get the most from a heated bed is to turn it on before you get in so the sheets and mattress warm up, then turn it off once you are in, which matches the fire services’ advice; some people say turn it down, which only fits a blanket made for all-night use. If the blanket has no shut-off and you are not sure, unplug it.

The gas oven is for cooking, not for heat, and the vents stay open. Keep the gas oven for cooking and the vents open asks you to read its safety part first. Carbon monoxide has no colour, no smell and no taste. If a carbon monoxide alarm sounds, or people in the home have a headache, dizziness, sickness, weakness, sleepiness, confusion, chest pain or breathlessness that ease when they step outside, get everyone out into fresh air now; switch off the oven or heater on the way only if it takes a second. Then call from outside. In the US, call 911. In the UK, call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999 (0800 002 001 in Northern Ireland) if a gas appliance may be leaking, and 999, or go to A&E, if someone is struggling to breathe, confused, collapsing or has chest pain; NHS 111 is for milder symptoms. Elsewhere, call your local emergency number. Do not go back inside until you are told it is safe. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that people who are asleep or have been drinking can die from carbon monoxide before they feel anything, which is why it says never to heat a house with a gas oven, and why the alarm matters more than how you feel.

Some people object that people cook with gas every day, and the page says what changes when the oven is on for warmth. The time: a dinner takes an hour or so, while heating runs all evening and often into the night, when you are asleep. The flame: with the door open the oven never reaches its temperature, so the burner keeps firing the whole time, and a gas flame that does not burn cleanly makes carbon monoxide. One person argues the risk is overstated; the others answer with the hours and the flame that never stops; the night, when the person breathing it is asleep, is the CDC’s point. The CDC’s own line is short, never heat your house with a gas oven, and the US Fire Administration says the same about any oven. What the oven can give you safely is the warmth left after you cook: once it is switched off, its burner is out, and the heat is yours to keep. If you do open the door, keep small children and pets well back while it cools; a US fire-safety standards body asks for a three-foot “kid-free zone” around space heaters, and the page says an open hot oven is one.

Put a carbon monoxide alarm near where people sleep. The CDC says battery-operated or battery-backup alarms near every sleeping area, and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission adds one on every level of the home; the UK’s NHS says to have one in each room with an appliance that burns gas, oil, coal or wood. One person warns that an alarm with no battery can fail in a power cut, which can be the very night an oven or a heater gets used for warmth. The same page takes apart the second tip, shutting heating vents in empty rooms. In a forced-air system the air does not simply go to the open rooms; more of it leaks out of the ductwork, and a 2003 study at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which modelled California houses with their ducts outside the living space, found closing vents raised energy use rather than cutting it. Some people warn that water pipes running through a shut-off room, especially one over a garage, can freeze and burst, and at the far end of the risk, some people warn that less air across the furnace can crack its heat exchanger, which can leak carbon monoxide; heating firms say the same in their own guidance, and the page says it found no public safety body that states it. That is the far end of the risk, it says, not what happens the first night you shut one vent.

If the heat is out and it is freezing, people split: one person says that when there is no other heat and freezing is close, a gas oven with a window cracked beats hypothermia, and the warning against the oven, as some people put it, makes the same exception: avoid it unless it is life or death. The CDC and the US Fire Administration make no exception, and the page does not leave the choice open, because a cracked window does not tell you how much carbon monoxide is in the room, and the person it poisons may be asleep. What works instead, safest first: go where it is warm, if you can, a friend, family, or a public building such as a library while it is open; in the US, calling 211 can point you to local help, including warming centres where your area runs them, and in the UK, ask your energy supplier about its Priority Services Register, and Citizens Advice can help with what support you are owed. Warm the person, not the house: the CDC’s advice for the cold is several loose layers of clothing with a hat and gloves, dry blankets, and warm drinks that are not alcohol. The CDC says never to burn charcoal or use a portable gas camp stove indoors, and never to run a generator inside the home or garage, even with the doors and windows open. An electric space heater goes straight into a wall socket, never an extension cord or power strip, at least three feet from bedding, curtains and furniture, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission says, and off when you leave the room or go to sleep, the Fire Administration adds. And know the danger signs of cold the CDC lists, shivering, exhaustion, confusion, fumbling hands, memory loss, slurred speech and drowsiness in adults, and bright red, cold skin with very low energy in babies: those need emergency help, 911 in the US, 999 in the UK, your local emergency number elsewhere.

Who this is not for. The layering page says it: if the problem is not a walk but a flat that will not get warm, layers do not reach it, and its one warning for that reader is open flame, because candles and portable stoves used for warmth are how house fires start. Its advice for that evening is to find out what assistance exists where you live; LIHEAP, the national programme that helps lower-income households with heating, cooling and sometimes past-due energy bills, is in the Resource Bank and cited below. The wood page names who it is not for: renters, anyone with asthma or a tree or smoke allergy, a tightly sealed modern home, and anyone who cannot safely do heavy, repetitive lifting.