Room by room
Desk and home office heaters
The short answer
If you work from home, you may be paying to heat an entire house so that one person can type in comfort. Heating the room you are sitting in is the single easiest saving available.
Three approaches, honestly compared
| Approach | Power | Cost per hour at 27p/kWh | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal under-desk heater | 200–600 W | 5p–16p | Warms your legs; the room stays cold |
| Compact ceramic room heater | 1,000–1,500 W | 27p–41p flat out, less with a thermostat | Best all-round for a home office |
| Central heating for the house | Whole system | Typically several pounds a day | Wasteful if only one room is occupied |
Why a warm room beats a warm footwell
Cold hands and a cold nose are what actually stop you concentrating, and a footwell heater does nothing about either. A properly sized room heater brings the whole space to a comfortable temperature in a few minutes and then throttles back — you notice the difference on video calls, not just under the desk.
Setting up a home office for winter
- Close the door. You have just halved the space you need to heat.
- Block the obvious draughts — under the door, around old window frames.
- Position the heater so warm air reaches where you sit, not the back of a cupboard.
- Set the thermostat to 19–20°C rather than maximum.
- Use the timer to start twenty minutes before work and stop at the end of the day.
Noise on calls
Anything with a hard-working fan will be audible to the people you are speaking with. Ceramic heaters on a low fan speed are usually unnoticeable on a headset once the room has reached temperature and the element cycles down. Bare fan heaters are not — see fan heaters.
Can you claim any of it back?
If you are required to work from home, HMRC has allowances for household costs, and self-employed people can apportion heating in their accounts. The rules change, so check the current HMRC guidance or ask your accountant rather than relying on a heater website.
Safety in a room full of cables
- Plug the heater straight into a wall socket, not the extension block feeding your desk.
- Keep paper, cables and a laptop bag clear of the outlet grille.
- Choose a unit with overheat protection and, if free-standing, a tip-over cut-off.
RapidHeat at a desk
Compact enough to sit on a shelf or plug into a socket beside the desk, quick enough to make a study comfortable before your first meeting, quiet enough not to intrude on calls, and controlled by a thermostat and timer so it is not running while you are at lunch. If you also want warmth in a bedroom or lounge, the bundles work out cheaper per heater — see prices.
Work warm without heating the whole house
Order RapidHeat today with free tracked UK delivery and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
