20 Ways to Cut Your Energy Bill This Winter

Winter is when energy bills bite hardest — but it is also when the savings are biggest, because most of what you spend goes on heating rooms you are not in, at temperatures higher than you need. The 20 tips below are drawn from Energy Saving Trust and MoneySavingExpert guidance. Add the estimated savings together and a typical household could trim several hundred pounds over a single winter, although the figures overlap — turning the heating down, for example, already captures part of several other tips — so treat the total as an upper guide rather than a promise.

Heating: where the big money is

1. Turn the thermostat down by 1°C. You probably will not notice the difference, but the Energy Saving Trust estimates it could save around £90 a year in a typical home in Great Britain (£100 in Northern Ireland) — around 9% of a typical heating bill, according to MoneySavingExpert. Most households can be comfortable between 18°C and 21°C; our guide to what temperature your home should be explains the right settings room by room.
2. Use your programmer and timer. Your heating should be on only when people are home and awake. Setting it to come on 15–30 minutes before you get up or return, and go off shortly before you leave or sleep, is estimated by the Energy Saving Trust to save around £20 a year on its own — and more if your current schedule heats an empty house for hours.
3. Turn radiator valves down in unused rooms. Thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) let you keep spare rooms cooler instead of heating the whole house to one temperature, which the Energy Saving Trust estimates could save around £40 a year. Keep the valve in the room with your main thermostat fully open, and never turn a radiator completely off all winter — a small amount of heat protects against damp and frozen pipes.
4. Keep heat in the room. Radiator reflectors on uninsulated external walls, closing curtains at dusk and keeping doors shut all stop warmth escaping where you paid for it. None costs much, and together they make the thermostat setting you choose in tip 1 feel warmer.

Stop heat escaping

5. Draught-proof doors, windows and chimneys. Professional draught-proofing of windows and doors costs around £290 according to the Energy Saving Trust, but could save around £85 a year — and DIY tape, brushes and excluders cost a fraction of that. A chimney draught excluder in an unused fireplace could save around £60 a year on its own, and blocking draughts around skirting boards and letterboxes adds up too.
6. Insulate the loft properly. A quarter of a home’s heat can escape through an uninsulated roof. The Energy Saving Trust says topping up loft insulation from 120mm to the recommended 270mm could save around £20 a year, while fully insulating an uninsulated loft saves considerably more — our guide to loft insulation costs and savings breaks down both.
7. Check your walls too. If your home has unfilled cavity walls, filling them is one of the larger one-off wins available; our cavity wall insulation guide covers typical costs, savings of around £110–£380 a year depending on property type, and the problems to avoid.
8. Insulate the hot water tank and pipes. If you have a hot water cylinder, an insulation jacket at least 80mm thick could save around £40 a year, and lagging exposed pipes keeps water hotter for longer between the boiler and the tap.

Hot water habits

9. Cut shower time to four minutes. Showers are one of the biggest hot water costs in most homes. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that keeping showers to four minutes could save a typical household around £60 a year, and swapping one bath a week for a four-minute shower could save around £9 a year.
10. Fit a water-efficient shower head. If your shower takes hot water straight from your boiler or immersion heater, an efficient shower head reduces the flow without ruining the shower, and could save a typical household around £40 a year on energy — plus around £41 a year on water bills if you are metered.
11. Turn the flow temperature down. If you have a combi boiler, lowering the heating flow temperature to around 60°C makes the boiler run more efficiently without making rooms colder — they just warm up a touch more slowly. Households with a hot water cylinder should keep the cylinder at 60°C, which is hot enough to control legionella while avoiding wasted energy.

Laundry, dishes and the kitchen

12. Wash at 30°C and run full loads. Modern detergents work well at lower temperatures. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that washing at 30°C instead of higher temperatures, and doing one fewer run per week, could save around £26 a year.
13. Ditch the tumble dryer when you can. A heated airer or a rack near (not on) a radiator costs far less to run than a dryer cycle. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that not using your tumble dryer could save around £50 a year.
14. Use the dishwasher’s eco mode — and only run it full. Eco settings heat water more slowly and use less of it. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that running your dishwasher only when full, and cutting one run per week, could save around £11 a year.
15. Only boil what you need. Overfilling the kettle wastes electricity every single time. The Energy Saving Trust puts the saving from filling carefully at around £10 a year — small, but it takes no effort at all. Our guide to what uses the most electricity at home shows why anything that heats water sits at the top of the running-cost table.

Lighting, standby and the small stuff

16. Swap remaining bulbs for LEDs. Lighting is a bigger share of winter bills because the lights are on for more hours. Replacing all the bulbs in a typical home with LEDs costs around £190 and could save around £45 a year, according to the Energy Saving Trust, and LEDs last far longer than halogen equivalents.
17. Turn lights off and use daylight. Simple, but the Energy Saving Trust still estimates around £8 a year for switching off lights you are not using — more in homes with older bulbs or lots of downlights.
18. Switch appliances off standby properly. Televisions, consoles, set-top boxes and chargers sip power around the clock. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that remembering to switch appliances off standby could save around £45 a year. A standby saver plug or a timer makes it automatic.

Your tariff and help with bills

19. Check whether fixing beats the price cap. The price cap limits what suppliers can charge on standard variable tariffs, but fixed deals below the cap appear and disappear with the market — and MoneySavingExpert’s current advice is that the cheapest fixes can undercut the cap significantly. Our comparison of fixed versus variable tariffs explains how to decide, and a smart meter makes any time-of-use tariff possible later.
20. Claim everything you are entitled to. Winter help exists and goes unclaimed every year: the Warm Home Discount gives eligible households £150 off electricity bills, Winter Fuel Payments support pensioner households, and Cold Weather Payments of £25 per very cold week apply in some circumstances. Citizens Advice also stresses contacting your supplier early if you are struggling — suppliers must offer an affordable repayment plan, and many run hardship funds. None of this counts as cutting usage, but it cuts what you pay, which is the point.

Start with tips 1 to 3 today — they cost nothing — then work down the list as time and budget allow. The households that save the most rarely do one big thing; they do most of these small ones.