Not every home is ready for a full retrofit right now, and that’s fine. If you own an older or period property, there’s a set of genuinely worthwhile, low-cost changes you can make before you ever think about wall insulation, a heat pump, or solar - and knowing what they actually save (rather than what a salesperson claims they save) helps you decide whether to stop there for now or keep going.
This is the realistic version of that advice: what each measure costs, what it saves according to the Energy Saving Trust’s own published figures, and - just as importantly - what it can’t fix.
Heating controls: the best pound-for-pound saving
If your heating system is still running off a single thermostat and no thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs), this is usually the best value upgrade available. A full set of controls - programmer, room thermostat, and TRVs on every radiator - typically costs around £550 fitted; adding TRVs alone to an existing system is closer to £410. The Energy Saving Trust puts the resulting saving at around £110 a year, on top of which turning your thermostat down by just 1°C (from 22°C to 21°C, say) saves roughly another £90 a year on its own, at no cost at all.
The other half of this is using the controls properly once they’re fitted: set each TRV to the lowest setting that keeps that specific room comfortable rather than leaving them all wide open, and don’t box radiators in behind covers, which stops the TRV reading the room’s actual temperature. None of this requires touching the fabric of the building, which is exactly why it’s worth doing first.
Draught-proofing: cheap, fast, and easy to get wrong
Professional draught-proofing of windows and doors across a whole house is typically around £250, saving in the region of £85 a year, with an open chimney worth draught-proofing separately (roughly £60 a year saved, and chimney caps start around £150). DIY strip and sealant work costs a fraction of that.
The part that matters more than the cost is what you don’t seal. Extractor fans, underfloor grilles and airbricks, wall vents, trickle vents above windows, and any fixed ventilation for a gas appliance all need to keep working - they’re there on purpose, not an oversight. This matters even more in a period property with solid walls, where blocking ventilation can trap moisture that the wall build-up was never designed to hold, which is the same underlying issue covered in our guide to insulating a period or Victorian home. Draught-proofing the gaps around doors, floorboards, and skirting boards is safe territory; sealing anything that looks like it was deliberately built to let air through usually isn’t.
Loft insulation: a long-term payback, not a quick one
If your loft has little or no insulation, topping it up to the recommended 270mm typically costs around £900 from a bare loft, or about £750 if you’re topping up from an existing 120mm. The annual saving the Energy Saving Trust quotes for that specific top-up (120mm to 270mm) is a modest £20 a year - which looks unimpressive next to the installation cost until you factor in that loft insulation typically lasts around 40 years. It’s a “fit once, forget about it” measure rather than one that pays for itself quickly, and it’s usually one of the cheaper, less disruptive fabric improvements available for an older home.
What quick wins can’t do
None of the above touches the biggest source of heat loss in most pre-1930s homes: solid brick or stone walls with no cavity to fill. Heating controls, draught-proofing, and loft insulation are worth doing regardless, but they work around that problem rather than solving it - a period property that’s still stuck on an EPC band E or F after all three will likely stay there until the walls themselves are addressed, which is a bigger and more disruptive project covered in the period-property guide linked above.
It’s also worth being honest that these figures are national averages, not a promise for your specific house - actual savings depend on how your home is currently heated, how it’s used, and its size and construction. Treat them as a reasonable planning guide, not a quote.
Deciding what’s next
If you’ve done the quick wins and want to know what a bigger step would look like and cost, our whole-house retrofit cost guide breaks down the next tiers up, from a standard upgrade through to a full deep retrofit. Either way, the sensible starting point is the same: know what your property’s current Energy Performance Certificate actually says about where its heat is going, rather than guessing.
Check your property’s EPC rating and get matched with a local specialist →