Do any of you have warm conservatory? How?

[Nochristmasbreak]

I love my conservatory but it's ice cold in winter, despite a radiator.

What would be best to warm it up?

Putting a roof on it? (And blocking out the lovely light)

Under floor heating?

Adding blinds all the way around? (again blocking out the light)

Adding another radiator?

We keep the conservatory doors open and the log burner in the lounge and heat from the rest of the house keep it warm. We also have an oil heater that we can use if the log burner isn’t lit. The tiled floor is still cold under the feet though.

Mines is always freezing with blinds all around & an oil heater.
I think roofing is going to be our next thing to try.

Proper roof blinds and a radiator here and it's freezing. Have to keep the double doors open to the living room to keep it warm but that makes the room that bit colder. 7 years later since moving in and not found anything that makes any difference. Still love it though for the summer months. Working in it currently its painful.

You could try an aircon unit. I know someone who has two for a large conservatory. Warm in winter, cool in summer.

My friend has underfloor heating in hers

I'm pulling ours down and replacing with a garden room. It's the worst and most unusable space in the house due to how cold it gets.

We have friends who put on a £12k roof and installed underfloor heating and it's still bloody cold in theirs.

We just have one long radiator and under floor heating. It’s warm, not toasty. We also used to have Venetian blinds all the way round, not the roof though. We ripped them out in the summer and the conservatory doesn’t feel any colder for it this winter.

Oh bugger nothing great so far then?

I keep the door open all day sometimes, and it just makes the rest of the house cold.

We got one of those air con units for the bedroom to keep it cold in the summer (could do warm too) bloody noisy and useless with the big tube thing out the back.

My family have a wood burner installed. Expensive but lovely and warm.

@ShowOfHands tell me more about this garden room, what is the difference?

I love the conservatory in the summer, it's warm and so light and I love that.

I have a large conservatory which we use as the main living space and is open to the rest of the house ..... being open to the rest of the house helps, I also have two radiators on the walls, ceiling blinds (which also keep it cooler in the summer) and a dyson fan that I put on when it’s really cold ..... sitting here now in PJs watching TV, no dyson and it’s warm enough :)

Our living room opens up into the conservatory with no divide so can get chilly.
We had 'heat levelling' (or something) glass put in and just before xmas.. two very tall radiators and it has made such a difference! I'd put a proper roof in but we like the light!

We use ours as our main living room and just have one radiator in it. The doors are kept open all the time ( which lead into the kitchen) we do have a small electric fire in there each is occasionally used in the early morning.

Its never really cold, maybe because it is used all the time. We have a tiled floor with a huge thick rug on top of it

Today the oven was on in the kitchen, as was the tumble dryer and although we have snow on the ground it was sunny and I had to open a window.

It could be because we live in the south and the conservatory is south facing.

We've got a proper room with 6 panel bifold corner doors -
It's got a double radiator in that room and it's still cold -
Argh! Thinking of getting some sort of fire - butane maybe

Tiled roof and underfloor heating worked well in our old place.

@Shylo that's what I want! I want to sit in there in the evening. I would love to see a picture of how a useable conservatory looks in the evening.

Does anyone have underfloor heating? Do you recommend or think it was a waste of money in such a cold room?

Never use mine in winter. Don’t need the space. But I did say to DH the other day that I can’t wait for Spring when it becomes useable again. When I’ve been in hospital it’s the place I dream of being.

Our conservatory did have two radiators, but that never made it warm enough to use in the winter.

We installed under floor heating, which is nice on your feet, but expensive to run and still doesn't make it warm enough to sit in. The game changer is the wood burning stove...it is brilliant. If we open the conservatory doors, it will also heat the living room.

The stove is just dying out now...after a cosy afternoon!

We have underfloor heating in ours. It works really well. It comes on for a couple of hours in the morning and normally stays at temperature until the heating comes back on in the evening.
We sit in it daily and eat most of our meals there.

We have a small wall heater at the bottom and then use a plug in blow heater every 30 mins to keep it warm when were in there and its fine.

That wood burner does look beautiful, but my son son has asthma and struggles with burning wood/smoke.

@Kottbullar do you have blinds or a roof or radiators, or just the underfloor heating?

We though about a woodburning stove but can't justify the environmental cost and having asked estate agents, builders and friends, the consensus was that most people prefer a garden room extension to a conservatory.

The garden room will have a lot of the benefits of a conservatory as we will have big doors and windows, plus you can put in skylights too if you want but proper brick walls and a proper roof around the glass, as well as a radiator plumbed into the central heating means it will be the same temperature as the house year round.

Garden room will look like this pretty much with a big window in the other wall too.

I have underfloor heating in mine. Its warm, but still not particularly 'cosy', still a glass box in the midst of winter.