There are several options to heat a single room.

Electric heating

The simplest option is often electric heating. This is the best choice if you only need to heat a single person, say if you find yourself getting a bit chilly sitting at the computer, or watching telly. There are two suitable types. A radiant heater has an element that gets red hot and will "shine" heat onto you, or a small fan heater will blow warm air at you.

For more widespread heating, we recommend oil column heaters, particularly for children's bedrooms, as they're silent and the surface temperature of the heater is not dangerously hot. You could also consider other convection heaters such as a panel heater, or fan heaters. A fan heater, although noisy, does have the advantage of moving warm air around the room to keep the temperature even.

For more information, see our guide to choosing an electric heater. To work out what size (capacity) electric heater you will need for a certain size room, see our interactive calculator - What size heater do you need?

A more energy-efficient option is a heat pump. These can be small enough to heat just one room or large enough to heat a big open plan area. They are moderately expensive to buy and install but have low running costs. You can use the thermostat to set the temperature exactly where you want it. And in summer they can be used for cooling.

Another option is radiant ceiling panels. The most common type consists of a heating foil which is installed between the framing and the ceiling plasterboard. To prevent the ceiling plasterboard from overheating and possibly cracking, a special thermostat with an additional sensor buried in the ceiling should be fitted.

Ceiling heating provides very pleasant and fast-acting warmth. Retro-fitting to an existing house is mostly possible, but expensive.

Gas heating

Gas options include flued or unflued natural gas or LPG models. We don't recommend unflued gas heaters, as they release water vapour and potentially-harmful exhaust gases into your home (see our March 2009 news item for more on this).

We prefer gas heaters to be fixed to the wall, and we recommend you use the type that has the flame totally enclosed. That way the heater can't tip over and there is no naked flame to create a fire hazard.