Insulating Floors: What Insulation Do I Need?

Kingspan floor insulation being laid
(Image credit: Kingspan)

Insulating floors is often trickier than insulating other areas of your home. The ground floor beneath a house is generally warmer than the air around it, and so it would perhaps be third on your list of priorities (behind walls and roofs). However, it makes sense to consider retrofitting, particularly if you have a suspended timber floor.

You can retrofit floor insulation on top of a solid concrete base, too, but this will have an impact on floor height build-up. And it’s only worth digging out the floor if you’re undertaking a major renovation.

Tim Pullen

Tim is an expert in sustainable building methods and energy efficiency in residential homes and writes on the subject for magazines and national newspapers. He is the author of The Sustainable Building Bible, Simply Sustainable Homes and Anaerobic Digestion - Making Biogas - Making Energy: The Earthscan Expert Guide.


His interest in renewable energy and sustainability was first inspired by visits to the Royal Festival Hall heat pump and the Edmonton heat-from-waste projects. In 1979

this initial burst of enthusiasm lead to him trying (and failing) to build a biogas digester to convert pig manure into fuel, at a Kent oast-house, his first conversion project.


Moving in 2002 to a small-holding in South Wales, providing as it did access to a wider range of natural resources, fanned his enthusiasm for sustainability. He went on to install renewable technology at the property, including biomass boiler and wind turbine.


He formally ran energy efficiency consultancy WeatherWorks and was a speaker and expert at the Homebuilding & Renovating Shows across the country.