While your heating system handles the grunt work of keeping you toasty at home during the cold days of winter, it does run into some basic limitations. Your central heating won’t exactly keep the floors warm, heat up your bed, or make the patio a little cozier, so you can sit outside in the cold. That’s why we use different appliances, accessories, and all sorts of other gear to fill in the gaps and make your home as cozy as possible in the face of the freezing temperatures outside.
Want to make your home office warmer than the rest of the house, so you can really get in a proper working mood? You can use a space heater to bring extra warmth to the room. Your home’s tile floors too cold during the winter? Slip in a toasty pair of fleece slip-ons and have an easier time moving around the house. Point is, there are plenty of little things you can do to make your home a warmer, more comfortable place during the winter season and we highlight a bunch of them in this list.
These are the best gear to keep things warmer, cozier, and toastier at home during the cold days of the year.
Duck Brand Window Kit Insulating Shrink Film
Gaps along the window edges and single-paned glass windows can cause a fair amount of draft to get inside your home. The quick way to fix it is to use this insulating film, which you can heat shrink to give those problem windows an airtight seal. It’s a lot cheaper than replacing your windows entirely, all while being durable enough to stay in place till the weather warms a bit during the spring. Every kit comes with 10 sheets of the film, each of which is sized to properly seal up one window measuring 3 x 5 inches. Do note, you’ll need a hair dryer to heat-shrink it and a pair of scissors to cut it at the right size for your windows, but all the necessary adhesives are included.
Noahas Fluffy Bedroom Rug
You can get a room to pretty toasty temperatures, but if you walk barefoot on its floors, there’s a good chance your feet are going to feel freezing cold. Wood and tile floors just don’t hold heat very well, so you want to place a barrier between the floors and your feet. If you like walking barefoot inside a room, the best thing to do is to cover the floor with an area rug. This rug is available in various sizes, from 2 x 3 to 8 x 10 feet, allowing you to cover both small and large areas, depending on what you need. More importantly, we love its super soft, shaggy texture that really gives your feet something comfortable and warm to sink into. It has non-slip surface on the opposite side, so it’s designed to stay in place, with 16 colors available, so you can match it with your interiors.
Darn Tough Merino Wool Lifestyle Socks
During winter, we love lounging around at home in warm socks. It’s the easy way to keep your toes and ankles toasty the whole time. We’re especially fond of Darn Tough’s knitted socks, including this pair, which is made from a blend of Merino wool, spandex, and nylon, giving thermo-regulating, moisture-wicking, and odor-resistant properties, among other technical qualities. Of course, the thermo-regulation is our main concern here, as it really keeps things warm beneath the socks during cold weather, making this a really comfortable pair to wear all day while you’re lounging at home and well through the night when you’re trying to stay warm in bed. Plus, these are perfectly good socks to wear outdoors, too, so you can just keep them on and wear them under your boots when you need to step out for a bit.
The Comfy Original Wearable Blanket
They call it a wearable blanket, but it’s really more like a blanket fabric that’s been sewn into a loungewear hoodie. You know… like a hooded sweatshirt on steroids. Regardless of which category you want to dump it in, it’s an incredibly comfy garment with silky microfiber on the shell and warm Sherpa fleece in the lining. It’s oversized, so it makes no restrictions on your movement, allowing you to lie down, lean back, or roll around to your heart’s content, while being just as warm as your favorite blanket, with no part of the fabric draping down the floor and getting caught on the legs of furniture like a blanket normally would.
Sunbeam Royal Ultra Fleece Heated Blanket
An electric blanket offers one of the most cost-effective solutions to keeping you toasty when you’re lying in bed, delivering the warmth you require to get comfy directly under the sheets, eliminating the need to crank up the thermostat or bring in a space heater to the room. Sunbeam makes some of the most popular heated blankets in the market, including this one that’s made using a lightweight poly fleece with a flatter pile and a soft nappy texture. It has 12 temperature levels, so you can choose how hot it gets under the sheets, as well as an auto-shutoff function that you can set between one and 12 hours, so you can keep the heating function running till you wake up in the morning. The whole thing is machine-washable, too, so you can put it in the washer and dryer for cleaning.
Cuisinart CPK-17 PerfecTemp
A hot coffee or tea can do wonders during a cold day. If you frequently sip on hot beverages to heat up in the face of cold weather, we figure an electric kettle can save you a whole lot of time. This model plugs in to any outlet and allows you to quickly send a liter of water to a boil in under five minutes. It can actually accommodate up to 1.7 liters of water at a time, with both a “boil” and “keep warm” setting, so you don’t have to use the hot water right away. Want your hot water at a specific temperature? Not a problem, as this comes with five temperature presets, namely 160, 175, 185, 190, and 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It also maintains its setting after you lift it off the heating plate, so long as you put it back in under two minutes, making operation extremely smooth.
Aran Crafts Merino Wool Crew Neck Sweater
Thick winter jackets are great for staying toasty when you’re leaving the house. Indoors, though, you want to put on something a whole lot comfier like this authentic Irish cable knit sweater, which comes with a mix of honeycomb, diamond, and basket stitch pattern. Made from merino wool, it’s the perfect top to keep things toasty at home, whether you’re preparing lunch, taking a Zoom call in the home office, or tending to your greenhouse in the backyard. It’s a unisex style that looks great on men and women alike. Plus, it’s nice enough to wear out if you want a warmer mid-layer under your jacket.
Vornado AVH10 Space Heater
We’re big fans of Vornado’s air circulators, so it’s no surprise we’re just as fond of their space heaters. This model is small enough to tuck into a small corner in the room, all while being powerful enough to heat up a 256 square-foot space. It has an onboard thermostat that allows it to heat a room efficiently, while the built-in fan circulates the hot air with the same effective function as their air circulators. You can set the temperature anywhere from 60 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Do note, it takes a while for it to heat the whole room evenly, so you might want to position it closer to where you’re chilling if you want to feel the heat as soon as possible. It will automatically shut off when it detects either excessive heating or the device tipping over, while the housing remains cool to the touch even after several hours of activating the heating function.
Sunbeam Premium Restful Heated Mattress Pad
Electric blankets are great, as they let you wrap yourself in a comfy shell that actively heats up all through the night. Of course, you’re still lying down on a bed that doesn’t have the same active heating function, which you can change by wrapping your bed in this heated mattress pad. It performs, pretty much, the same heating function as Sunbeam’s heated blanket above, albeit in the form of a mattress cover. As such, it offers the same 12 heat setting to dial in your desired temperature, 12-hour selectable shutoff, and dual control panels for heating up each side of the bed separately. This one is made from quilted polyester, making for a pretty good-looking bedding that should suit most bedrooms.
Ember Mug 2
Hot beverages are nice. If you consume them slowly, though, they can get cold pretty fast, especially if you don’t have the heat turned all the way up inside your house. This self-heating mug can keep your drinks hot at your desired temperature between 120 degrees to 145 degrees Fahrenheit, which you can set using the companion app. Unlike other self-warming mugs, though, it doesn’t use a contact heat source that actively heats it every time you set it down. Instead, the mug itself houses the heating elements, so you can walk around the house with the mug in hand and it will maintain your ideal drinking temperature. It also never burns the coffee the way some warming mugs do, so the beverage retains most of its taste down to the last sip, all while automatically turning off as soon as it detects that the mug is empty. Do note, it’s only designed for handwashing, although it is IPX7 rated, so you can leave it in the sink with no issues.
Glerups Boot with Leather Sole
There’s no shortage of cozy slip-ons you can wear to keep your toes warm indoors during winter. Problem is, most slip-ons leave you ankles bare and it does get a bit cold sometimes. That’s why we prefer these boots, which are made from a 100 percent felted wool upper, allowing it to keep your entire feet and ankles toasty while you get chores done around the house. Even better, they’re breathable, so they keep you warm without overheating, eliminating the sweaty feet that comes with some of the warmer slippers out there. The soles are made from calf leather, so they offer enough support for indoor use, although they also offer it with a rubber outsole if you want boots you can wear out in the winter streets.
Bemis Radiance Heated Night Light Seat
If the toilet seat feels a tad too cold to your liking when you sit on it during wintertime, you may want to swap it out in favor of this heated version. It comes with three temperature settings (97, 100, and 104 degrees Fahrenheit), so you can get the right kind of comfort without ever getting too hot, as well as an integrated night light to make it easier to find the toilet in the dark. According to the outfit, their toilet seats are guaranteed to have no wiggle, courtesy of the Sta-Tite fastening system, so it’s going to stay in place the whole time, all while being designed to close slowly, making it a treat for those who absolutely hate hearing the toilet seat slam down.
Keenray Towel Warmer
A thick, soft towel is pretty comforting during the winter cold, but wouldn’t it be nicer if that same towel has been heated to toasty temperatures? That’s exactly what you can do with this handy bucket, which can heat up towels, bathrobes, scarves, socks, and all sorts of other garments. It can get a towel warm in just a minute of sitting inside, although it requires six minutes to get it to the maximum temperature. Just make sure to turn it on before hitting the shower and you’ll be treated to a warm towel as soon as you step out. Do note, it’s not going to dry wet towels, so don’t even think about it – just hang those things to air-dry like normal.
Amazon Basics Propane Patio Heater
This propane-powered patio heater can heat a space of up to nine feet around it, making it powerful enough for most home’s adjoining outdoor spaces. Using it is very straightforward – just hit the ignition button and turn the knob to get your desired temperatures. There’s a built-in chain to hold the propane tank in place, as well as a tank cover to keep it out of sight, although there’s no access hole to use the shutoff valve on the tank, so you’ll have to lift the cover every time if you’re the type to turn the valve off each time you finish using the heater. The base, by the way, can be filled with either water or sand to ensure the whole thing doesn’t tip over, while wheels make it easy to move the whole thing around in the patio.
Solo Stove Ranger 2.0
We’re huge fans of Solo Stove’s smokeless fire pits, as they offer an excellent way to enjoy an open fire in the patio during the cold nights of the year. This one is the smallest of their backyard models, measuring just 15.25 x 15 inches (height x diameter) and weighing 15 pounds, making it compact enough to stash behind furniture when it’s not in use, while producing enough heat to create a comfy space for a small group. It’s made from 304 stainless steel, so this thing can hold up to the ravages of regular use, while the optimized airflow makes starting and maintaining a fire an incredibly easy affair. Because it’s so compact, it’s also plenty portable, allowing you to throw it in the boot of the car to enjoy open fires outdoors if you want to leave the house.
