How does infrared heating work? A plain-English guide
How infrared heating works: a thin element in the wall, ceiling or floor warms you and the room’s surfaces directly, instead of heating the air first. Temperatures, heat-up times and what it means for your bills.
Stand in winter sunshine and you feel warm on your face, even when the air is freezing. That warmth didn’t come from the air. It travelled straight to you as infrared, and your skin turned it into heat.
Infrared heating works the same way, just gentler and indoors.
The short answer: infrared heating uses electricity to warm a surface: a floor, a wall, a ceiling or a panel. That warm surface gives off infrared, which travels across the room and is absorbed by you, the furniture and the other walls. They warm up, and they warm the air around them. You feel warm sooner, and you’re comfortable with the air a couple of degrees cooler than a radiator would need.
Here’s how that works, what it’s like to live with, and where it makes sense.
Heating the air versus heating you
Most heating you’ve grown up with heats the air. A radiator is mostly a convector: it warms the air next to it, that air rises to the ceiling, spreads out, cools and sinks. Eventually the room warms up. On the way, the warmest air gathers above your head, and the walls, floor and windows can stay cool.
That matters more than it sounds, because your body loses most of its heat indoors by radiation to the surfaces around you. Cold walls pull heat out of you, however warm the air is. That’s why a room can read 21 °C on the thermostat and still feel chilly.
Infrared heating turns that around. It warms the surfaces and the people first, and the air follows.
What actually happens, step by step
Our systems use a heating element about 0.4 mm thick, with carbon fibre spread across the whole surface instead of a single hot wire. It goes behind the plaster, under the tiles or into the ceiling, adding just 2 to 3 mm to the build-up. Once the room is finished, you don’t see it.
- Electricity flows through the carbon fibre. All of the electricity that goes in comes out as heat. There’s no flame, no water and nothing moving.
- The whole surface warms up gently. Because the heat is spread over a large area, the surface doesn’t need to get very hot. A heated floor stays under 29 °C. A heated wall or ceiling runs at 40 to 55 °C.
- The warm surface gives off infrared. At those temperatures it’s long-wave infrared, at 6 to 15 µm. You can’t see it, and it doesn’t glow. It’s the same kind of infrared your own body gives off.
- You and the room absorb it. Your skin, your sofa, the other walls and the floor soak it up and warm up. Warm surfaces then warm the air that touches them, so the air temperature rises too, just not first.
This isn’t the orange glow of a patio heater or a halogen lamp. Those run far hotter and give off short-wave infrared, which is intense up close and fades quickly. A large, gently warm surface is a different kind of heater. More on the physics on our why infrared page.
Why it feels warmer than the thermostat says
What you actually feel is a mix of the air temperature and the average temperature of the surfaces around you. Heating experts call it the operative temperature. With radiant heating the surfaces are warm, so you feel comfortable with cooler air.
In practice most people set the thermostat 2 to 3 °C lower than they would with radiators and feel just as warm. Every degree lower saves roughly 6% of the heating energy, so that’s about 12 to 18% less energy for the same comfort. The full explanation, with the comfort standard behind it, is in thermal comfort explained.
A couple of nice side effects come with it. The air near your head isn’t much warmer than the air at your feet. And since nothing is blowing warm air around, there are fewer draughts and less dust carried about.
Where it goes: floor, wall or ceiling
You can put infrared heating in the floor, the walls or the ceiling, and each behaves a little differently.
- Ceilings give 50 to 80% of their output as radiant heat and look down on the whole room, so nothing blocks them. Furniture can go anywhere. Our ComfortScrim goes into a plastered ceiling, and our PowerBoard panels fit into plasterboard or ceiling grids.
- Walls give 40 to 60% as radiant heat and suit rooms where the ceiling is high or already finished.
- Floors give 20 to 30% as radiant heat. The rest warms the air above them. They’re the cosiest option under bare feet, and our floor systems stay under 29 °C at the surface.
If you’re torn between them, wall or ceiling heating goes through the choice in more detail, and why 55 °C explains how we settled on ceiling temperatures.
How quickly does infrared heating warm a room?
Pretty quickly. You start to feel a heated wall or ceiling within 3 to 10 minutes of switching it on. The room reaches its set temperature in about 20 to 30 minutes. A floor is slower, at 40 to 60 minutes, because the heat has to come up through the tiles or boards first. A water-based underfloor system buried in screed can take several hours.
That speed is what makes infrared heating work room by room. Every room has its own thermostat, and a smart home schedule can warm the bathroom before you get up and the living room before you get home. You don’t need to keep the whole house warm all day just so it’s comfortable when you need it.
Watch it in three minutes
Our short film shows the difference between heating the air and heating the room:
Is infrared heating efficient?
Inside the room, yes. Every kilowatt hour of electricity becomes a kilowatt hour of heat, made millimetres from where you are, with no boiler, pipes or tank to lose heat along the way.
Being honest about it, though: a kilowatt hour of electricity usually costs more than a kilowatt hour of gas, and a heat pump gets two to three units of heat out of each unit of electricity at the machine. The saving with infrared doesn’t come from cheap energy. It comes from heating only the rooms you’re using, only when you’re using them, and holding them a couple of degrees lower. How well that works depends on your insulation, your habits and your electricity price. We go through real numbers in is infrared heating cost effective?, and if you have solar panels, ComfortScrim can run on them directly, as explained in infrared heating and solar.
Where infrared heating makes the most sense
- Renovations, where you don’t want to dig up floors or run pipes. The element adds just 2 to 3 mm.
- Rooms used at set times, such as bathrooms, bedrooms, home offices and guest rooms. Here fast heat-up and room-by-room control save the most. See infrared heating for bathrooms.
- Well-insulated homes and new builds, where the heat demand is low and a boiler or heat pump system would be oversized.
- Homes where you want nothing on the walls: no radiators, no vents, no units.
- Clinics, salons and care settings, where silent, fan-free heating and warm surfaces matter. See infrared heating for dental practices and beauty salons and infrared heating for hospitals and care homes.
It’s a harder case in a large, draughty house that has to be kept warm all day, every day. There, insulation comes first, whatever heating you choose.
Does it last?
There’s very little to go wrong. No pump, no fan, no water, no burner and no annual service. Our elements are tested for a lifespan of more than 20 years and carry a 10-year warranty. If you’re wondering about safety, we cover that separately in are infrared heaters safe?
How infrared heating works: your questions
How does infrared heating work, in simple terms?
Electricity warms a surface, such as a floor, wall, ceiling or panel. The warm surface gives off infrared, which travels through the room and is absorbed by people, furniture and the other walls. They warm up, then warm the air around them. It is the same way the sun warms you on a cold, clear day.
Does infrared heating heat the air?
Indirectly. It warms people and surfaces first, and those warm surfaces then warm the air that touches them. The air in the room does get warmer, but you feel comfortable with it about 2 to 3 °C cooler than with radiators, because the surfaces around you are warm.
How long does infrared heating take to warm a room?
You feel a heated wall or ceiling within 3 to 10 minutes. The room reaches its set temperature in about 20 to 30 minutes. A heated floor takes 40 to 60 minutes, because the heat has to come up through the floor finish first.
How hot does an infrared heating surface get?
Our heated floors stay under 29 °C at the surface. ComfortScrim walls and ceilings run at 40 to 55 °C. PowerBoard 250 ceiling panels run at 50 to 60 °C. None of them glow. Halogen and quartz heaters are a different kind of heater and run far hotter.
Is infrared heating the same as a patio heater?
No. Patio, halogen and quartz heaters have a small element that glows at hundreds of degrees and gives off short-wave infrared. Infrared heating in a home uses a large surface at 29 to 55 °C, which gives off gentle long-wave infrared at 6 to 15 µm, the same band your body gives off.
Is infrared heating cheaper to run than gas or a heat pump?
Per kilowatt hour, electricity usually costs more than gas, and a heat pump gets more heat out of each unit of electricity. Infrared saves by heating only the rooms in use, only when they are in use, and at a lower air temperature. Whether that makes it cheaper overall depends on your home and habits. Our article on whether infrared heating is cost effective works through the numbers.
Can infrared heating heat a whole house?
Yes. Each room gets its own heating and its own thermostat, sized to the room. It works best in reasonably insulated homes. In a poorly insulated house, insulation should come first, whatever the heating.
