Ideal Temperature to Set Thermostat in Winter

DATE: January 7, 2016

Our HVAC technicians are often asked what temperature they would recommend customers set their home thermostat to for the ideal mixture of comfort and cost savings. Residential thermostats use 9 percent of all energy in the U.S. Accordingly, learning how to set your thermostat properly has the potential for real energy bill savings of up to 15 percent a year. Since this is such an important issue, we thought we would take a few minutes to address it on our blog today. Here are our recommendations for setting the thermostat in winter.

What temperature is best for winter? 

The temperature in your home should be set to meet your comfort needs. We all want to save energy and cut our utility bill, but we also want to be comfortable in our home. If we aren’t comfortable in our own home where can we be?

The Department of Energy recommends the following:

As a general rule, your thermostat should be at a higher setting when you are in the home and a lower setting when you are away from home or asleep. The Department of Energy recommends setting the thermostat at 68 degrees Fahrenheit while you are home and lowering the thermostat by 10 to 15 percent for time away from home or sleeping. Accordingly, this would mean a nighttime temperature of 57.8 to 61.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thermostat tips

A programmable thermostat allows you to set the thermostat temperatures one time, and then rest assured that the thermostat will operate according to your settings day in and day out. Programmable thermostats have separate settings for days of the week versus Saturday and Sunday, and for times of the day, so you can customize your environment for comfort and cost savings.

For example, try setting your thermostat to come on 15 to 30 minutes before you awake for the day, so the house is warm when you get up. When you leave for work, set the thermostat to go down. Then have it heat up 15 to 30 minutes before your standard arrival home from work (so you return to a warm home) and turn down in the nighttime when you generally retire for bed.

If you have any other questions we can answer, we would be glad to help. Contact us here or by calling our Louisville office at 502-491-9880 or our Lexington office at 859-313-5244.