How to Keep Warm in Winter
A renter-friendly permaculture guide to surviving winter in a freezing Australian home
by Kate Fardell, Gavin Hardy, and Barb Ford

It’s no secret that a lot of Australian homes aren’t well-designed for cool weather. When winter-hardened expats from Europe and North America are online complaining about how cold Australian homes are, you know it’s bad. While an airy home and wooden floors are great in the heat of a Brisbane summer, the drafts and lack of insulation in winter can make our homes feel Antarctic!
For various reasons related to budget (cost of living), agency (renting, time poor) or ethics (carbon footprint, resource use), many of us shiver through the cold months. But we don’t need to! In our guide to keeping warm this winter we’ve taken a permaculture principles approach to help you ‘Catch and Store Energy’ and ‘Produce No Waste’ using ‘Small, Slow (and cheap) Solutions’.
Whether your own your home or are renting, these tips are for everyone!
1. Layer Up
Psychology tells us that if we can keep our head, hands and feet warm in winter, then we will feel warm. So, pop on your wool beanie, scarf or buff, some thick socks, and a pair of fingerless gloves when you’re at home. If you don’t have an elder or retro friend who loves gifting their knitting, op shops are a great place to get your winter warmies.
Of course, you’ll also need to layer up your other bodily parts. Invest in some good quality thermal shirts and pants and wear them under your clothes while at home. Even if fashion is your top concern, there are plenty of great colours and ways to style thermals under clothes while still looking your best. Add a fleece or down jacket on top of all that, and you’ll be ready to tackle even the coldest Aussie home. As a bonus, these pieces are often readily available in op shops or second-hand online spaces like Depop.
We also suggest cultivating a lifelong friendship with a warm natural fibre blanket that you can hide under while streaming your favourite media or working from home!
2. Get in the Hot Seat
Placing a seat or couch against a north- or east-facing brick wall that gets full sun is an easy way to warm up! If you only have a timber wall, place a large piece of cardboard (fridge and bike boxes are perfect) that’s been painted black between the wall and the seat. This adds an extra layer to soak in the warmth, especially if it’s a dark colour.
3. Move Your Booty
On a sunny day, if protected from wind, it’s often warmer outside the house than inside! Because of this (and the lack of sweltering heat) the cool months are the best time to get active. All those gardening and building repair jobs you’ve been avoiding are great to do now – pruning with hand saws and pruners keeps you fit and warm, as does painting walls and cleaning out the gutters on a warm roof. If you can’t garden at home, community gardens are often looking for volunteers to help out. You could even get involved at Northey Street City Farm!
4. Avoid the Wicked Winds from the West (and South)
On the east coast of Australia almost all our cold winter winds come from the west and south. As you go about your day, aim to avoid these aspects and stick to the north and east. Parking a van or truck, stacking up hay bales, or planting a hedge, when positioned correctly in the western and southern sectors, can act as a windbreak and slow down cooling of your home.
Pop into City Farm Nursery for some great hedging plant ideas!
5. Seal it Up
Drafts can sneak between window and door gaps, so look at where the gaps are and start sealing them up. An easy way to find gaps is to use Barb’s method of passing a lit incense stick around the edges of your doors and windows and watching for the smoke to blow.
Once you’ve found some cracks, there are plenty of rental-friendly ways to seal them up. For a makeshift door snake, roll up your summer beach towel, secure it with rubber bands and place it at the bottom of the door (see image above). You can also use brush door seals, and draft excluders underneath doors, while adhesive weather stripping can help seal any cracks around windows and the sides of doors. And take note: if your windows rattle when it’s windy, you can simply wedge some folded paper into the gap between the frame and the window to help with draft sealing (and to stop the god-awful rattling).
6. Rug Up
The drafty gaps in the wooden floors of many Queensland homes are a great way to keep things cool in summer, but they can lead to frozen toes in winter. Putting down large rugs in rooms with wooden or tiled floors is an easy way to add insulation to the floors – plus it’s a great way to add a touch of flair to your home!
If it’s an option, you can also use a caulking gun with polyfiller to seal up any minor gaps in wooden or tile floors and reduce cool drafts from below.
7. Curtain Call
Up to 40% of heating energy can be lost through glass in winter, so swap the sheer curtains for some heavy floor-length block out curtains and close them in the late afternoon to reduce heat loss in the evening.
Bonus points if you can install a pelmet above the rod to avoid any extra air seeping out the top of the curtains. This could even be made from stiff, light material like cardboard and installed using command strips to keep the adjustments renter-friendly! Check out this Instagram reel by Melanie Lissack Interiors for DIY pelmet inspiration.
Another way to use curtains to conserve heat is by installing them as doors or makeshift room dividers to reduce the size of the room you’re trying to heat up. Use tension rods if drilling isn’t an option.
8. Become Little Miss Sunshine
While closing the curtains is a good idea in the evenings to reduce heat loss, don’t forget to use the sunshine as your home heating during the day if you have some large windows that let in direct light. Plus, if you’ve got pets, they’ll thank you for that warm sunny spot!
9. Reverse Ceiling Fans
Did you know that some ceiling fans have a winter mode? This means the fan blades move in the opposite direction and more slowly to distribute the warm air near the ceiling downward. If you’ve got ceiling fans, see if they have a reverse or winter mode! If not and you own your home, consider installing some to improve warm air flow.
10. Cheap Heat(ers)
If you need to use an electrical appliance to heat your home, then perhaps the most efficient option is to place a radiant heater in your bedroom or other small room with the door closed. Radiant heaters work like the rays of the sun and can heat a room very quickly, while helping to keep it warm for longer, even when the heater is turned off (due to it being able to heat the objects in a room, not just the air). They are also relatively cheap to buy and run compared to other heater types.
For a larger space, like a living room, an electric oil heater may be a better option, and more energy efficient. However, the price to buy an oil heater is generally a little higher.
Note: Floor mounted radiant heaters and oil heaters are not suitable if you have small children or curious pets. For homes with pets or small children, convection heaters may be the best option for price and cost of running as the panels generally don’t get hot enough to burn. A lot also come with timers that can be set to turn on and off automatically.
11. Be Snug as a Bug
Fill up a hot water bottle or two and pop it under the blanket just before you’re about to go to bed to stay toasty while you sleep. It’s definitely more comfortable than great-grandmas method of taking a heated brick wrapped in a towel to bed (though that’s an option too, in dire straits). Add some flannelette sheets, wool/fleece blankets, and a thick doona insert – down or thermal are good to look out for – and you’ll be snug as a bug in a rug!
For an extra a bedtime heat boost, electric blankets are more energy efficient than running a heater and can keep you cosy all night long.
12. Get Baked
Get the oven fired up and bake your favourite meals! When done, open the oven door and let all that gorgeous heat flow into your home. Baked potatoes and pumpkins, swedes and sweet potatoes are delicious. Roasts, shepherds’ pies, apple crumbles, apple and rhubarb pies, cakes and biscuits – what are you waiting for!?
13. Don't Hate, Insulate
Many Aussie homes were built before insulation was mandated by the Building Code of Australia, meaning a lot of warmth in winter is lost through the roof. If you own your home, then installing ceiling insulation is a must. Plus, it has the bonus effect of keeping in the cool air in summer, so it’ll help with energy efficiency in all seasons! In South-East Queensland, the Building Code recommends roof insulation with a total thermal resistance (R-value) of 4.1.
Tutorials for basic DIY insulation for renters also exist, but the costs can add up and extensive research should be done prior to installation. Have a chat to your landlord or agent to see what they’re willing to help out with.
14. Double Glazing
If you own your home and have some money to spare, consider replacing single-glazed glass with some double- (or even triple-) glazed glass. Double glazed windows can reduce heat loss in winter (and heat gain in summer) by up to 30 percent, which when combined with block out curtains and pelmets, really packs a punch. Plus, double glazing reduces outside noise, so you’ll have a more peaceful home.
If you’re a renter or if double glazed windows are out of your budget, you can apply any clear film over glass to help reduce heat loss. A popular option in a pinch is bubble wrap, but clear acrylic pieces stuck against the glass with some clear double-sided tape are a less-visible option. As a bonus, it can help protect your windows, and there are plenty of recycled options available!
Check out this Instagram reel by The FixIt Chicks to see how it looks.
Learn More
Our Permaculture Design Course can teach you plenty about sustainable building design, cost-saving and eco-friendly methods for heating and cooling, and much more. For more information, visit the course webpage.