The bathroom is one of the coldest places in the house; whether it’s winter or summer it’s always freezing. It’s the only room in the house that you are wet without clothes on yet it’s usually an ice box. House & Home spoke with Dennis Gehman, MCR (Master Certified Remodeler), and president of Gehman Design Remodeling about what causes the room to be so cold and how we can warm it up.

What areas of my bathroom contribute to it feeling cold?
The first thing is that the room is primarily hard surfaces. There are tiles, countertops, the glass on the shower door, all of the surfaces that make it feel cool and cold when you touch them.

The age of the house and what type of insulation they have can also play a role. I know there were a couple bathrooms recently where their location on the second floor was overtop the garage and the garage was not heated and it’s at the far end of the house from where the furnace is, so the heat that’s coming out of the vents is not as warm as it is when it’s closer to the furnace. That whole combination of things makes it a cold space.

Can humidity play a part in the temperature too?
Humidity is generally thought of when it’s too warm, because warm air holds more moisture but depending on the temperature and the amount of clothes you have on, the humidity right next to your skin might not feel warm. That’s part of the whole thing we hear on the weather forecast. Where primarily in the winter, they’re talking about the real temperature and feels-like temperature, some of that has to do with wind speed but it also has to do with humidity levels that are present. In the summertime the main reason we have air conditioning is more because of the humidity than because of the temperature—80 degrees or higher feels pretty hot when it’s humid but people who live in Arizona where it’s 90 degrees and no humidity, it’s not too bad.

Is there more than one way to remedy the problem; where is the first place to start?
The first places that I think of starting is one, insulation, but unless you’re doing a major repair and tearing everything out there really isn’t much you can do there. The other one is the heat source—if it’s at the far end from where your furnace is we’re probably not going to do much better with that furnace, but we can put auxiliary heat in. We could install a strip of electric baseboard heat that would be more permanent, or a decorative wall mounted electric heater. If we’re putting in new flooring, then we can install radiant floor heat and that would make a difference in the temperature of the floor when you step on vinyl or tile. A warm floor is going to help that and just the natural laws of physics—warm air doesn’t just stay on the floor it rises up so it’s going to make the whole room feel warmer.

What about ambient heating with lamps and such?
Heat lamps are one way that is often addressed. You can get auxiliary heat, many exhaust fans are made that you can have a heater with them. The heater can be on without the fan being turned on and we can put radiant heat panels on the ceiling. The same electric heat that we put under each floor tile or vinyl flooring can be used under the seat of a shower and countertops.

We’ve done some bathrooms that tend to be a larger master bathroom that has a tub with a gas fireplace. I always advise that you purchase an inline heater for tubs where the water is moving, because before too long, as you’re sitting in it, that water cools down even more so when it’s going through the whirlpool process. With an inline heater, each time the water gets thrown back in to be blown back out it goes through a heater that heats it back up to whatever temperature you pre-set it to.

Gehman Design Remodeling
PA Contractor Registration PA00297
355 Main Street, Harleysville, Pa. | (215) 513-0300
GehmanRemodeling.com

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 20, Issue 5 (November/December 2019). 
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