over night: heat on or off?

[DragonFly]

I was raised in the north. We'd turn the heat down/off, wear warm clothes and throw on extra blankets at night while we'd sleep.

My guy was raised in the south, in a very temperate climate. He would rather turn the heat up to a nice cozy temperature and just sleep with a sheet and no blanket.

Despite his rantings that our bedroom is as cold as a meat locker, for the most part, he goes along with me (it saves, money, right?) But it got me wondering a bit, which do you do: turn the heat up or down before you go to bed.

[Winter Biscuit]

Michigander here....

Our thermostat is automatically programmed to turn the heat down at night, and it turns the heat up in the mornings when we are waking up and getting ready for work. Then after we leave for work, it's programmed to go back down again.

I honestly don't know how low we go at night - but I think it's 60-62. Our normal winter-time temp is 68 (a little higher if it's REALLY cold out).

[PinkMartini]

We leave the heat on the same temp at night as it is during the day. We have individual thermostats in each room, so our bedroom and our DS' bedroom is on about 65 constantly. We keep the heat off in the guest room/bathrooms and keep the doors closed. And the heater in the living room gets shut off at night as well.

[Ericka_Jarett]

usually have it up to 70 to go to bed. Our son sleeps in a blanket sleeper but if we are cold in our room when we have a sheet, thin blanket and a comforter on, we know his room is cold too. The girls sleep in sleepers and together with a receiving blanket directly on them and a crocheted one draped over their bassinet.

I grew up in NJ and live in PA now. We have a heat issue so we have to turn the thermostat up to 70 or 72 for the heat to kick on.

[eponymous]

Blanket, definitely! I can't imagine the cost of heating to a point where I'd be comfortable with just a sheet. I don't turn my heat off at night; it's too cold for that here, but I usually turn it down.

[laura]

We live in a moderate climate, but I turn the heat off when we go to sleep. We have electric heaters (I think that's what they are) with temperature controls in each specific room. I usually turn on the one in our bedroom for about 30 minutes before we go to sleep, and then I turn it off. The primary reason I turn it off is that it is really loud when it shuts off, and it cycles on and off constantly which drives me crazy during the night. Secondary, I don't like to be hot when I sleep.

[laura]

fake ETA: when we lived in the Northeast, we always turned the heat down at night (but not off due to freezing pipes issues).

[Ericka_Jarett]

I should add, our heat is landlord paid and he knows their is a heat issue. thermostat says 72, although it feels colder than that usually

[Tracie]

We always turn our heat down at night. It's 68 during the day, 60 at night.

[AHammer]

we turn down the heat and keep a small heater in our bedroom w/ the door closed. It keeps it nice and toasty in our room! I cannot sleep comfortably if I'm cold.

[Txfish]

I'm such a wimp -- it obviously shows that I've lived in Tx my whole life! I usually keep the heater at 72-74 and it only goes down to 70 at night. LOL

Of course, we only need it about 2 months of the year and often go between heat and a/c in the same day.

[phoenics]

I like it to be relatively cool when I sleep, so I always turn the heat down or off when I go to bed. But I live in a moderate climate...

I did turn it from 60 to 65 last night though because I was so cold I couldn't sleep. I guess I need to grab extra blankets tonight.

[1_mommy]

ours is at 68-70 during the day, and at night i turn it to 65, unless it is really cold that night, and it goes back to 70

[trestlegirl]

Off. I live in SoCal so I rarely use heat at all to begin with, but I don't sleep well if I'm too warm. I'm happiest at about 60 degrees, snuggled under my down comforter.

[karlatta]

My DH is the worst blanket hog in the world, so I have to turn the heat up before we go to bed. Even if we have separate blankets, he somehow manages to steal mine.

We typically keep the A/C at 74 and the heater at 68 in the winter. And yes, we use both. Even within the same day. :)

[julietchicago]

We have an infant so we keep the heat at 72 most of the time, day and night. The part of the house where our bedrooms are is kind of chilly so that is why we keep it a little higher than most people do.

[tenofcups]

We're in the northeast. We keep it at 72-74 during the day and turn it down to 66 or 68 right before we go to sleep. We both sleep better when it's cooler, but I hate to have it cold before then. FWIW, we keep the ac at similar temperatures during the summer.

[Lochlann]

I can't sleep if it's warm! I love being under layers of blankets in a cool room. We always turn the heat down to 60 when we go to bed, and it stays that way until we get home from work at night. We crank the heat up to 68 or 70 for a few hours and then it goes back down. We are very conscientious about our heating bills!

[KrissyCat7]

We turn the heat down at night if we remember.

[imagirliegirl]

I am from Texas and I always turned the vent off in my room when the heater was on. Now I live in Nebraska and I still don't use it. I'd burn up if I did. I also have the fan on.

My poor husband is freezing.

[meganth]

Michigander here....

Our thermostat is automatically programmed to turn the heat down at night, and it turns the heat up in the mornings when we are waking up and getting ready for work. Then after we leave for work, it's programmed to go back down again.

I honestly don't know how low we go at night - but I think it's 60-62. Our normal winter-time temp is 68 (a little higher if it's REALLY cold out).

This is all true for me. Michigander. Programmable thermostat. Home time temp is 68. Gone/nite temp is 62. I'd put it down to 60 but i have a parakeet who i'm always worried about getting too cold.

[silvergrey]

I can't sleep if it's warm! I love being under layers of blankets in a cool room.

Same here. I love snuggling under blankets when it's cool. We set the heat to 58 at night, 64 when we're home. It helps that my husband is a furnace and keeps me warm at night!

[Koala_Gurl]

So Cal Desert here, and we have a down comforter, and sleep with the window open (temps can range from 30 - 50 during the winter).

We set the timer for the heat to kick in about 30 minutes before we wake up if it is really cold out.

But, I HATE, HATE, HATE forced air heating. It is quick, but man does it dry me out. I wish we had radiators here. :)

[ysolde]

Off. I am from the Caribbean, and, ironically, I grew up in air conditioning, and like it cool when I sleep.

[Sol]

I keep the heater off int he bedroom all day, but turn it on at 65 one hour before going to bed. I turn it off as soon as I go to sleep (or leave it until 4 am, when I indefectively get up to go to the bathroom now that I'm pregnant) if I'm really cold. I have nightmares if I'm way too cold or too hot when I sleep, so I stick to exactly this. I do use a down comforter, though. I prefer a colder room, anyway, but not so cold that I can't keep my arms out and read for a while.

We keep the living-room intermittently on and off between 60-65, with DH usually cold and me hoping to turn it off because the heated air is too dry and gives me headaches.

[Scooter]

We keep it at 68 during the day (sometimes I cheat & bump it to 70 for awhile) and turn it down to 55 at night. We make sure to dress warm and use nice, warm comforters. Just conscientious about our energy use, I guess!

Our insulation isn't the greatest, so if we turned the heat off it would get much colder in here. I should add, winter nights here range from the 30s to the 40s.

[Photobug]

We keep ours at 60-62 during the day, we don't turn it down at night. Unless we've had an unusually warm day - like last week when it was sunny and in the 50s during the day, and that heated our bedroom sufficiently that we had to turn the heat down to be comfortable at night. (We've got lots of blankets and two heat-generating cats to keep us warm at night, though.)

[Hello Kitty]

Oh yes we turn it down. In fact when the heater kicks on in the morning, it wakes me up because it makes me hot. I like it when my face is cold when I'm sleeping.

We have radiators and it depends on if DH is home or not. If he is, it's 66/62. If not, I just leave it on 'hold' at 60 and sequester myself under blankets during the day. We used to do 66/55 with forced air, but I don't think it's good for boilers to do that much of a swing in a day.

[Dotsie]

We keep our heat at 60 during the day. We turn it down to around 55 at night. We use an electric space heater int he family room (where we spend most of the day) to keep us warm. At night, we have an electric blanket... and we bundle up.
The cost of energy is just too much now a days. I was raised to keep the heat down at night, but we have made drastic measures the past 2 years.

[kdotp]

We have a programmable thermostat that's set at 68 for when we're at home and 62 for when we're gone during the day and at night. We sleep with two quilts and a down comforter on our bed (and I'm usually bundled up in sweatpants, sweatshirt and fuzzy socks). We live in a 90-year-old house with drafty windows and little insulation in the central Midwest. We have a space heater in DS's room to keep his room a little warmer.

[Ali]

SO and I are extreme opposites when it comes to temperature and comfort level. He prefers it cold and I prefer it hot. During the day we compromise and are both uncomfortable. At night we turn the temp down and I sleep with the dual control electric mattress pad turned on on my side of the bed and extra blankets on top of me. He turns up the heat in the morning so it is not uncomfortable for me to get out of bed.

[diam124]

We keep ours at 70 during the day and 65 at night. Our bedroom is on the third floor of our house though and the thermostat is on the second level, so our room is generally warmer than the rest of the house. I guess our house is well-insulated because the heat generally doesn't kick on at night unless it's really cold (we're in MD), so it stays above 65 most of the time.

[jennylou]

When we run our furnace, it goes lower at night. We have been burning in our wood stove most of the year though, so our furnace hasn't even clicked on very often. :) And, we live in NE Ohio.

[Fenway]

Massachusetts here.

Ours goes up to 68 degrees around 530 until 830 in the morning. It goes down to 60 degrees during the day, then goes back up to 68 degrees around 5:30 until 9:00, then back down to 60. It's on a timer so we never have to think about it.

We usually aren't home during the day. If we are we'll override it.

[myshel]

We have a programmable thermostat that runs at 68 degrees when we are home and 64 degrees when we are gone and at night. We don't do below the 64 degrees because of our dog and the fact that one of our children doesn't know how to sleep under covers and his room gets quite chilly. For DD, we dress her warmly and cover her with blankets. I tend to wear layers, while DH doesn't. We sleep under a down comforter. I live in the Midwest and grew up sleeping in chilly rooms.

[pocahontas]

I'm such a wimp -- it obviously shows that I've lived in Tx my whole life! I usually keep the heater at 72-74 and it only goes down to 70 at night. LOL

Well, if you're a wimp, I must be too and I am from the NE, but would DIE if I had it as cold as some of these folx in here! :eek: Our bedroom is in the back of the house and gets cool at night anyway, even with heat. That being said, I ditto you complete...72-74 during the day and I usually don't touch it at night. I just leave it alone because it feels fine (and my DH refuses to sleep with covers. He hates anything touching him when he sleeps (except his underwear :rolleyes: ). Unlike him I need my sheet and comforter!

[TX Sweetheart]

I have a hubby who gets hot very easily and a dog who gets cold very easily, so I cater to their temperature needs... because the dog sleeps curled up under the blanket at night, we can turn the A/C on without him freezing to death.

[QueenDillyDally]

We keep our thermostat at 62 downstairs and 65 upstairs (our bedroom is the coldest room in the house... no clue why) most all the time. When we are home and if we are cold, we will turn the heat up to 68. But, we wear heavy sweaters/sweats around the house all the time.
We are native New Englanders through and through! :)

[MichelleRenee]

I am the northeast and we keep ours at 74 all day and night. I do turn it down before work, but not too low. We are all freeze babies in this house. Even when it is 74 I am wearing sweatpants, a long sleeved shirt and my bathrobe!

[IrishEyes]

Programmable thermostat. 70 when we're home, 62 during the day and 64 at night.

Took me a little bit to get DH used to it. He had a heated waterbed before he met me, and had it set to 80 degrees or something so he could sleep in a t-shirt and boxers and no blankets. I always wondered, when he moved into an apartment away from his waterbed what he was doing when he went into the living room really quick each night... raising the thermostat of course!

[salysaturn]

We are in the Northeast as well, and we've had out heat OFF since early December. We have a Pellet Stove, that keeps the house @ about 70-73. Our bedrooms are over the garage, so at times they get a little chilly, so on night where it is REAL cold, we put on a space heater.

[PinkMartini]

SO and I are extreme opposites when it comes to temperature and comfort level. He prefers it cold and I prefer it hot.

Sounds like DH & I. We fight almost nightly about the temp control in our bedroom :rolleyes: He just doesn't understand that 55 degrees is too cold with our 10 week old in the room!

[Jenyfer9]

We also have a programmable thermostat. We keep ours at 67 during the day (I'll turn it up if I need to, but that's not very often) and it drops to 56 at night (since we're all under the covers anyways), but I bump it to 70 between 5-8am so we don't freeze when we're getting dressed in the morning.

[DragonFly]

I wish we could get a programable thermostat. I asked the utility guy when he was here shortly after we first moved in, but it turns out our place is too old for one (we're in a rental). Which of course also means we have old leaky, single pane windows and almost non-existent insulation so our bedroom is hot as hell in the summer (western sun) and cold as all get out in the winter since it's further away from the [single] heat source. Otherwise though, we pretty much love our place.

It probably also doesn't help that our thermostat is far away from the heat source, so it's a completely inaccurate reading anyway (which was why the utility guy was out here way back when). Now we use an indoor/outdoor thermometer to let us know the current temps and kind of gauge things from there.

[rachrich]

An Ohioan here with a programmable thermostat. It's so convenient because we program it to our workdays/weekends/nights. When we go away for a weekend we will just run it on temporary adjustment.

But to answer the question, we have it at 70 during the bitter winter months in the day and it's at 60 at night. We'd probably go down to 55, maybe 50 at night if we didn't have a 2-yr old who sleeps so wildly and ends up without her covers. I dont' want her to get cold. We use flannel sheets to help keep warm too-they're great.

[kristin]

We actually do not have any heat in our bedroom in Northern NJ! When we bought the house, the inspectors neglected to find that there were no functioning air ducts in our bedroom. We use space heaters and turn them on an hour before bedtime, but usually turn them off during the night because of the safety issue.

It's especially fun when its really cold out - we are waiting for a storm that is supposed to hit tomorrow. Our tempurpedic mattress actually freezes when it gets really cold and makes it kinda crunchy to sleep on!

Of course now that we are moving we have to fix it - I wish we had fixed it 4 years ago!

Ideally, I would have a thermostat that I could regulate - I don't get a good nights sleep when I'm too hot, but I absolutely HATE waking up to a freezing house!

[udsweetpea]

I'm in the northeast, and we keep it at 74 during the day and 71 or 72 at night. We have garage door sized windows so that's why we keep our heat up so high.

[jmvan74]

We keep it on 72 round the clock. We have crappy insulation and old windows. Even on 72 my little one's hands are always cold. :( One day we'll own an energy efficient home.

[gayle]

60 at night, 68 to 70 during the day.

[coquelicot]

Tennessean here.

With a heat pump, DH tells me that it's more expensive to adjust the temperature between day and night. Leaving at the same temp all the time is better for it--I guess because it has less work to do? So we leave it on all the time.

Anyway, we used to keep our thermostat at 72 degrees 24/7 except if we were going to be gone a couple of days. With me being pregnant and getting hot at night, I've asked him to turn it down to 70. This has about made him freeze at night. With him usually being hot and me being cold, this is a big change for us. :) I've had to ask him to put on something more than boxers and a T-shirt if he's cold. I can't do much if I'm hot aside from throw the covers off me, which doesn't work. I have to have SOME cover on me to be able to sleep.

[Neen]

We live in an 100 year old drafty farm house. The insulation isn't bad on the house, but the windows stink.

We keep the temp at 68 all the time, unless I get really cold, then I'll turn it up to 70.

Oh, and we are in Indiana.

[Mentul77]

Tennessean here.

With a heat pump, DH tells me that it's more expensive to adjust the temperature between day and night. Leaving at the same temp all the time is better for it--I guess because it has less work to do? So we leave it on all the time.

My dad is an A/C guy and he says the same thing. When he installed our digital thermostat, he purposely didn't put in a programmable one. He said just set it at a temp and leave it alone.

[Nigellas]

55 when I'm gone (it rarely actually gets that low in the house though), 60-62 for sleeping and 68-70 when I'm home. I'm in Michigan. :)

[tenofcups]

My dad is an A/C guy and he says the same thing. When he installed our digital thermostat, he purposely didn't put in a programmable one. He said just set it at a temp and leave it alone.

While that might make it more energy efficient, it doesn't necessarily do anything about comfort. We don't turn ours down at night to save money; we turn it down because it's more comfortable for us to sleep that way.

We do have a programmable thermostat, but it's not that much use to us since our schedules are so erratic. We're constantly overriding it.

[Kimberland30]

We have a programmable thermostat too, and mainly it's set for 66 when we aren't home, 68 when we are. Sometimes if it's chilly in the house I'll bump it up to 70, but it's rare. We have a karosene heater in our uninsulated den, and since we spend most time in there we don't notice the rest of the house is chilly.

Overnight it's set to 66. That's too cold for DD so she has an electric heater with thermostat in her bedroom. It's perfect for us because we have a big comfy cozy comforter, fleece blanket and sheets. I usually wear sweats when I go to bed (to read) just to warm up a bit, then strip down before going to sleep. I love being cuddled up in warm blankets...or a warm DH!