#undertileheating

Step onto a cold tile floor first thing on a winter morning and you feel the problem straight away. Electric underfloor heating for bathrooms solves that daily discomfort without relying on bulky heaters, noisy fans or patchy warmth that never seems to reach where you need it most.

For many Australian homes, the bathroom is one of the coldest rooms in the house. Tiles hold the chill, ventilation can pull heat out quickly, and short heating bursts from lamps or wall units often warm the air rather than the floor. That is why more homeowners, renovators and builders are turning to underfloor systems that heat the room from the ground up.

Why electric underfloor heating works so well in bathrooms

Bathrooms are a natural fit for electric underfloor heating because they are usually compact spaces with hard floor finishes and clear heating demands. You do not need to heat a large open-plan area for hours. Instead, you want targeted comfort at the times of day the room is used most.

An electric system sits beneath the floor finish and produces radiant heat. Rather than forcing hot air around the room, it gently warms the floor surface, which then helps warm the space more evenly. That creates a very different feel from overhead heating. The warmth is quieter, more consistent and far more noticeable underfoot.

This matters in bathrooms because comfort is not just about air temperature. If the tiles are cold, the room still feels cold. A heated floor changes that experience immediately.

The comfort benefits go beyond warm feet

The first benefit people notice is simple - the floor feels warm instead of icy. But the longer-term appeal is broader than that.

Bathrooms with underfloor heating often feel more balanced overall. There are fewer cold spots near the floor, and the warmth is less abrupt than a wall-mounted fan heater. That can make early mornings and late-night routines much more comfortable, especially in family homes where the bathroom is used constantly.

It also supports cleaner design. Because the heating is hidden beneath the floor, there is no need to make space for a visible heater on the wall. That gives renovators and designers more freedom with layout, storage and finishes.

For households sensitive to dust movement, radiant heating can also feel gentler. Unlike fan-driven systems, it does not rely on blowing air around the room. That is one reason many homeowners see it as a more comfortable, low-fuss way to heat smaller interior spaces.

Electric underfloor heating for bathrooms and energy use

Energy efficiency is one of the main reasons people look closely at these systems, but this is where a bit of nuance helps. Electric underfloor heating can be efficient in bathrooms because it is usually heating a smaller area for set periods, not trying to maintain whole-home temperatures all day.

When paired with the right thermostat and programmed around real usage patterns, the system can warm the floor before the household wakes up and switch back when the room is no longer in use. That kind of zone control matters. A bathroom does not need to be heated the same way as a living room.

Floor construction, insulation, room size and the chosen set temperature all affect running costs. A well-prepared installation with insulation boards beneath the heating system will generally perform better and respond faster than one installed without them. Faster heat-up times usually mean less wasted energy.

The key point is that efficiency comes from system design as much as the product itself. Choosing the right output, the right controls and the right floor build-up makes a real difference.

What type of bathroom floor works best?

Tile is the most common finish over electric underfloor heating in bathrooms, and for good reason. Tiles conduct and retain heat well, making them ideal for undertile systems. Stone performs similarly, although heat-up times can vary depending on thickness.

If you are renovating, it is worth discussing the final floor finish early. The heating system needs to match the build-up and intended use of the room. In some projects, floor height matters. In others, the priority may be rapid response, especially in ensuite bathrooms or powder rooms that are used for shorter periods.

This is where specialist advice helps. Not every bathroom renovation is starting from the same point, and the best solution depends on whether the floor is being retiled, rebuilt or included in a new slab or screed design.

What to expect during installation?

In most bathroom projects, electric underfloor heating is easiest to install during a renovation or new build. The system is placed beneath the floor finish, then connected to a thermostat by a licensed electrician. In wet areas, correct waterproofing and compliance are essential, so the sequence of trades matters.

For tiled bathrooms, undertile heating is often the preferred option because it is designed specifically for this application. Where floors are being built up more substantially, inscreed or inslab formats may be suitable depending on the construction method.

Good installation is not just about laying heating cable or matting. It includes heat-loss considerations, substrate preparation, insulation, waterproofing compatibility and thermostat placement. A specialist supplier-installer can coordinate these details properly and help avoid common issues such as uneven heating performance or avoidable delays on site.

How long does it take to warm up?

That depends on the system type and floor build-up. Undertile systems in well-insulated bathroom floors can deliver a relatively quick response, while thicker screed or slab constructions generally take longer to heat but may retain warmth for longer too.

There is no single answer that suits every project. If you want a bathroom to warm quickly for morning use, that needs to be considered in the specification stage. If the room is part of a larger new build where thermal mass is already part of the design, a different approach may make more sense.

This is one of the biggest reasons to avoid treating underfloor heating as a generic add-on. The system should fit how the room will actually be used.

Is electric underfloor heating safe in bathrooms?

Yes, when it is designed and installed correctly for wet-area use. Bathrooms require particular attention to electrical safety, waterproofing and compliance, so product selection and installation standards matter.

A properly specified system is concealed beneath the floor and controlled through an appropriate thermostat, giving you precise temperature management without exposed hot surfaces or portable appliances in the room. That is a practical safety advantage over plug-in heaters, especially in busy family homes.

It is also why choosing an experienced specialist matters. Bathrooms are not the place for guesswork or improvised installation.

When it makes the most sense

Electric underfloor heating for bathrooms is especially worthwhile when you are already renovating, replacing tiles or planning a new bathroom from scratch. At that point, the floor is accessible, the waterproofing sequence can be managed correctly and the system can be integrated with minimal compromise.

It also suits homeowners who want comfort without visual clutter, builders who need reliable heating specifications, and property professionals looking for an upgrade that improves day-to-day liveability. For premium homes it adds a polished finish, but it is not only for high-end projects. In many cases, it is a practical upgrade that delivers a better daily experience in one of the most-used rooms in the house.

If the goal is whole-home heating on its own, bathroom underfloor heating may only be one part of the answer. But if the goal is to make bathrooms feel warmer, drier and more comfortable exactly when people use them, it is one of the most effective options available.

Choosing a system with support behind it

The product matters, but so does the support around it. Homeowners and trade buyers alike usually need more than a box on site. They need clear specifications, installation guidance, responsive service and confidence that help will be there if questions come up later.

That is where a specialist provider stands apart. Warmup Australia supports projects with product supply, accredited installation, technical documentation and aftercare, which is especially valuable in bathroom applications where sequencing and compliance need to be right from the start.

A warm bathroom changes the feel of the whole home in a way that is hard to appreciate until you use it every day. If you are planning a renovation or building new, it is worth thinking about the floor before the tiles go down - because this is one upgrade you feel immediately, every single morning.

The short answer is no — not if you install the right system and use a decent thermostat. The longer answer requires actually looking at the numbers, which most guides are reluctant to do.

Let us do that here.

What drives the running cost

An electric underfloor heating system is essentially a resistive heating element — it converts electricity into heat. The cost of running it depends on three things: the wattage of the system, how long it runs each day, and what you pay per kilowatt-hour of electricity.

A standard bathroom undertile system in a 6 square metre bathroom might have a total load of around 600 to 900 watts. Running continuously, that is 0.6 to 0.9 kWh per hour.

Australia's average residential electricity tariff sits around 28 to 35 cents per kWh in most states in 2026, though it varies meaningfully between states and between peak and off-peak periods.

At 30 cents per kWh, a 750-watt bathroom system running continuously would cost around 22.5 cents per hour.

But here is the thing: no properly configured underfloor heating system runs continuously. That is the whole point of the thermostat.

What the thermostat actually does

A floor thermostat does two jobs. The floor sensor monitors the temperature of the heating element directly, preventing it from exceeding a safe limit and protecting both the cable and your tile adhesive. The time and temperature programming controls when the system runs at all.

A well-programmed thermostat for a bathroom might look like this: on at 5:45am, off at 7:30am. On again at 7pm, off at 10pm. That is roughly three hours of run time per day during the winter months.

At 22.5 cents per hour, three hours per day costs around 67 cents. Over a 90-day winter season (June through August), that is about $60. Over a six-month heating season in Hobart or Canberra, perhaps $120.

But that assumes the system runs at full capacity for the entire scheduled period — which it will not. Once the floor reaches the set temperature, the system cycles off and only runs again when the sensor detects a temperature drop. In practice, actual run time during a scheduled window is typically 50 to 70 percent of the scheduled duration, depending on how well-insulated the floor is and the ambient temperature.

Real-world daily running costs for a standard Australian bathroom underfloor heating system with a programmed thermostat fall between 20 and 50 cents per day in most parts of the country.

City by city: what Australian homeowners actually spend

Canberra and alpine NSW: The longest heating season in the country — May through September in most suburbs, potentially April through October in elevated areas like Braidwood and Cooma. At 30 to 45 cents per day over 150 to 180 days, annual running cost for a single bathroom: $45 to $80.

Melbourne and regional VIC: A genuine winter, typically April to October for heating purposes. At 25 to 40 cents per day over 120 to 150 days: $30 to $60 per bathroom per year.

Hobart and regional TAS: Similar to Melbourne in season length, slightly colder overnight temperatures. $50 to $90 per bathroom per year is a realistic figure.

Sydney and coastal NSW: Milder, shorter season — typically May through August. $20 to $40 per bathroom per year.

Adelaide: July overnight temperatures around 7 to 9°C make floor heating genuinely useful for four to five months. $25 to $50 per bathroom per year.

Brisbane, Gold Coast, and South East QLD: Short winter season, mild nights aside from Toowoomba and elevated areas. $15 to $35 per bathroom per year for most homes.

Perth: Short but reliably cold winter — June and July primarily. $15 to $30 per bathroom per year for a slab-on-ground home.

How does this compare to other heating options?

A typical reverse-cycle split system air conditioner running in heating mode in a living room consumes 1,000 to 2,500 watts depending on capacity and outdoor temperature. Running for three hours per evening through winter costs $2 to $4 per day — several times more than a bathroom floor heating system.

Gas ducted heating is often cited as cheaper to run than electric heating, and per kWh it is — but it heats the air in the room rather than the surface you touch. You typically need to run it longer to achieve comfort, and it does nothing for the floor temperature that makes getting out of bed in winter the unpleasant experience most Australians know.

Radiant floor heating warms the floor surface directly. When you step onto a warm floor at 6am in a Canberra winter, you do not care that the air temperature in the room is still 14 degrees — your feet are warm and that is where it matters first.

The smart thermostat factor

Smart WiFi thermostats have changed the economics of running electric underfloor heating systems more than any other single development. The ability to schedule heating from your phone, set different schedules for different days, and have the system auto-adjust based on whether you are home makes a meaningful difference to annual running costs.

Warmup's app-controlled thermostats, for example, allow scheduling down to 15-minute intervals across a 7-day program. The energy monitoring feature tracks actual consumption in real time, so you can see exactly what the system is costing and adjust accordingly. Some models include geolocation features — the system detects when your phone is approaching home and starts warming the floor before you arrive.

This level of control means the floor heating system only runs when it genuinely needs to. There is no forgetting to turn it off before a holiday. There is no running through spring because you did not update the schedule. You set it once, you adjust it occasionally, and you stop thinking about it.

What about inslab heating?

Inslab floor heating in a full home is harder to cost in the same way because it covers larger areas and is typically configured in zones. An inslab system heating a large open-plan living area will consume more electricity than a bathroom undertile system — but it replaces other heating entirely for those spaces rather than supplementing it.

The efficiency advantage of inslab heating is that the slab stores heat. In a well-insulated home, you can run the system at off-peak electricity rates overnight, charge the slab with heat, and draw on that stored warmth through the morning peak hours without the system running at all. Paired with rooftop solar, this becomes one of the most cost-effective whole-home heating strategies available in Australia.

The honest bottom line

Underfloor heating is not expensive to run if you do two things: use a programmable thermostat, and schedule the system to run only when you need it.

This is the question that comes up most often when Australian homeowners or builders start looking seriously at underfloor heating — and the honest answer is that the right system is almost always determined by one thing: when in the life of the building you are making the decision.

Let us go through both properly.

What undertile heating actually is

Undertile heating is an electric heating mat or cable system that sits directly beneath your tile finish — between the tile adhesive and the substrate beneath it. It does not go in the slab. It does not require any structural work. It lays flat across the floor, gets embedded in tile adhesive during the tiling process, and connects to a thermostat on the wall.

This is the right system for:

Any bathroom or kitchen renovation in an existing home. The floor is already there. You are not pouring concrete. You tile, and the heating mat goes down before the tiles do.

Apartment renovations. Undertile floor heating adds as little as 3mm to the floor build-up, which is within the tolerance of virtually every apartment renovation in Australia.

Quick installations. A licensed electrician can commission a standard bathroom undertile system in a single visit.

Any room where you are replacing tiles anyway. If the old tiles are coming up, the cost of adding undertile heating is minimal compared to the total renovation spend.

What it is not suited to: new homes where the slab has not been poured yet. You can still use undertile heating in a new home — but if you are at the construction stage, you are leaving performance and value on the table.

What inslab heating actually is

Inslab heating embeds electric heating cables directly in the structural concrete slab before it is poured. The cables are fixed to the reinforcing steel mesh at the correct spacing, the cable ends are routed to where the thermostat locations will be, and then the slab is poured over the top. The system is invisible. There is nothing to maintain. It will outlast the building.

Because the cables are embedded in a large volume of concrete — which has excellent thermal mass — inslab heating delivers radiant floor heating across the entire floor area with exceptional evenness. There are no warm spots near the cable and cold spots between runs. The slab absorbs heat and releases it slowly and consistently.

This is the right system for:

New homes being built on a concrete slab — which covers the majority of residential construction in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and large portions of Melbourne and Sydney's outer suburbs.

Any stage of construction where the slab pour has not yet happened. The window to install inslab heating is the reinforcing steel stage. Miss it and you cannot go back.

Builders and developers who want to offer underfloor heating as a standard or premium inclusion. The cost per home is low when done at scale, and it is a genuine point of difference in a competitive market.

Large floor areas. For an open-plan living zone of 50 square metres or more, undertile systems can be expensive. Inslab heating covers the same area at a lower cost per square metre when installed during construction.

What inslab heating is not suited to: renovation projects, existing homes, or apartments. Once the slab is poured, it is poured. You cannot add inslab heating to an existing floor without demolition.

The key difference most people miss

Undertile heating warms quickly and cools quickly. Because the heating element is close to the floor surface, with only tile adhesive and tile between the cable and the room, surface temperature responds fast — typically 20 to 40 minutes from cold to comfortable. It is ideal for a bathroom that you use for 30 minutes in the morning and not again until evening.

Inslab heating takes longer to reach temperature — typically one to three hours — but retains heat for much longer. It is better suited to living areas and open-plan spaces that you want to maintain at a consistent temperature for extended periods. In homes with good insulation, an inslab system can warm the floor overnight using off-peak electricity and the slab will still be warm at lunchtime.

Understanding this difference helps you choose not just the system, but the thermostat scheduling strategy. Both systems benefit enormously from a smart thermostat — the kind that lets you set precise daily heating windows so the floor is warm exactly when you need it.

What about inscreed heating?

Inscreed heating sits between the two. The cables are embedded in a separate screed layer poured over the existing slab, rather than in the structural slab itself. This means it can be used in renovations and extensions where a screed pour is feasible — typically in ground-floor extensions, laundries, and large living areas where there is enough floor height to accommodate the additional build-up.

Inscreed systems have better thermal mass than undertile but less than inslab. They take longer to heat up than undertile but respond faster than inslab. For heritage homes with high ceilings and a budget for a full ground-floor renovation, inscreed heating can be the right answer.

So which one do you need?

If you are renovating: undertile heating. Full stop.

If you are building new on a concrete slab: inslab heating, installed before the pour. If you miss that window, undertile heating once your floors are finished.

If you are building a new home with a suspended timber floor: neither inslab nor inscreed is feasible. Underlaminate heating (beneath floating timber or laminate) or undertile in the wet areas is the right solution.

If you are renovating a ground-floor extension and can accommodate a screed pour: inscreed heating is worth considering, particularly for large living areas.

It is one of the first questions every Australian homeowner asks, and one of the hardest to answer in a single sentence — because the cost of underfloor heating depends almost entirely on what you are installing, where you are installing it, and when in the build or renovation you decide to do it.

What we can do is break it down honestly, category by category, so you know what to expect before you speak to a supplier or electrician.

The Product Itself

For a standard bathroom undertile heating system — a heating mat or cable that sits beneath your tiles and connects to a thermostat on the wall — the product cost for a 5 to 8 square metre bathroom typically falls between $350 and $650 depending on the brand, system type, and whether you need a mat or loose cable layout.

Add a quality thermostat to that. A basic programmable model starts around $150 to $200. A smart WiFi thermostat — the kind you control from your phone and that monitors energy use automatically — sits between $250 and $400. Thermostats are not optional for tile systems: they protect the heating element from overheating and they are how you keep running costs manageable. Do not skip it, and do not fit a cheap one.

So for a complete bathroom underfloor heating system — mat or cable plus thermostat — you are realistically looking at $500 to $900 at the product level, depending on brand and thermostat choice. That is for a single, standard-sized bathroom.

Installation

The product cost is only part of the picture. In Australia, all final electrical connections — the thermostat, the power supply, the connection to your switchboard — must be made by a licensed electrician. This is not optional and it is not negotiable. It is a requirement under AS/NZS 3000 Wiring Rules in every state and territory.

The good news is that the physical laying of the heating mat or cable — unrolling it across the floor, positioning it around obstacles, setting it in tile adhesive before the tiles go down — is straightforward enough that a tiler can complete that part while the electrician handles the wiring.

Electrician costs for a standard bathroom underfloor heating system installation in a major Australian city typically run between $250 and $600. More complex installations — second bathroom, inslab heating, zoned systems — will cost more. Regional areas can vary either way.

Add it up: a single bathroom in an Australian home, fully installed with a quality thermostat, typically comes to between $750 and $1,500 all in. That is the realistic number.

Inslab Heating: A Completely Different Cost Structure

If you are building a new home on a concrete slab, the cost calculation changes significantly — and in your favour.

Inslab heating embeds cables directly in the structural slab before it is poured. The cables cost more than a mat system, and the layout requires a technical design, but you eliminate almost all labour cost beyond the cabling itself because the electrician is already on site for the build. The cost per square metre drops dramatically compared to retrofitting.

Inslab heating for an entire home is typically quoted per project, based on the number of zones, the home's floor area, and the number of thermostats required. For a full four-bedroom home, you might be looking at $3,000 to $8,000 installed depending on size, zone configuration, and builder margin. Spread across the lifetime of the home — and that system will last as long as the slab does — it is exceptional value.

The critical point: installing inslab floor heating after the concrete is poured is effectively impossible without demolition. The time to include it in a new build is during the reinforcing steel stage, before the pour. If you are building now and not including it, you are locking yourself out.

Inscreed And Underlaminate Systems

Inscreed heating — where cables are embedded in a separate screed layer poured over the structural slab — is used in extensions and renovations where a screed pour is feasible. The cost sits between undertile and inslab, and depends heavily on the screed depth and floor area.

Underlaminate heating, for timber and floating floor applications, is priced similarly to undertile in terms of product cost, with slightly lower installation complexity.

Undercarpet systems — ultra-thin mats that install between carpet and underlay — are typically the most affordable floor heating systems to purchase, often $200 to $400 for a standard bedroom, though the thermostat and electrical connection cost remains the same.

Running Costs: Not What You Might Expect

The initial cost is one number. The running cost is another, and this is where Australian homeowners often get a pleasant surprise.

A bathroom undertile system running on a scheduled thermostat — set to warm the floor for an hour before your alarm goes off, then again in the evening — typically costs between $0.20 and $0.50 per day during winter, depending on your electricity tariff and the size of the floor.

Over the course of a Melbourne or Canberra winter, you might spend $40 to $80 running the system. For a Hobart home with a six-month heating season, perhaps $60 to $100. For a Brisbane or Perth bathroom where the system runs for only three months of the year, annual running costs can be as low as $20 to $40.

The reason the running cost is low is not because the system uses no electricity — it is because you are heating a floor, not a room, and because a good thermostat prevents the system from running any more than it needs to.

The Real Question: Is It Worth It?

At $750 to $1,500 installed for a bathroom, underfloor heating is not a trivial purchase. But it is far less than most Australians assume before they look into it, and it delivers a daily comfort improvement that heating options costing five times more often cannot match.

A ducted gas system heats the air in a room. Radiant floor heating heats the floor surface — which is what your body actually touches when you step out of bed at 6am in a Canberra winter. Those are different experiences, and anyone who has used heated floors for a winter will tell you they are not going back.

If you are building a new home in Australia and underfloor heating is on your list of features to consider, there is one thing worth knowing before you sign anything: the window to include it at minimum cost is smaller than most people realise, and once it closes, it does not reopen without significant expense.

Here is what you need to know before the slab is poured.

The slab pour is the moment

Inslab electric underfloor heating works by embedding heating cables in the structural concrete slab before the concrete is poured over the top. The cables are fixed to the reinforcing steel mesh at the correct spacing, the cable ends are routed to the thermostat locations in the walls, and then the slab goes in over the top. The system is invisible, permanently protected, and will last as long as the building.

The cost to do this at the reinforcing steel stage is a fraction of what it costs to try to add floor heating after the fact. You are paying for cable, a few hours of electrician time for installation and routing, and a technical design from the supplier. The electrician is already on site. The reinforcing contractor is already on site. The concrete pour is already being scheduled.

After the slab is poured, the only way to add in-slab heating is to demolish the slab. This does not happen. In practice, post-pour inslab heating is not available.

Why some builders do not mention it

Not every volume builder includes inslab heating as a standard conversation item for two reasons. First, it adds a line to the quote that can make a house-and-land package look more expensive at comparison stage, even if the total lifetime value is strongly positive. Second, some builders subcontract electrical work separately, and the conversation about heating infrastructure may not happen until the project is already underway.

This is not necessarily bad faith — it is often simply a function of how the construction industry quotes and sequences work. But the result is that many buyers who would have gladly included inslab heating in a new build find out about it six months after they have moved in.

Ask the question before you sign. Ask it specifically and early: “Can we include inslab electric floor heating, and at what stage does it need to be decided?” A good builder will have a clear answer. If the answer is vague, contact the heating supplier directly to understand the sequence and cost.

What the technical design looks like

Inslab heating is not just cable dropped into a slab. It requires a technical design that specifies cable spacing, zone boundaries, cable lengths, thermostat locations, and load calculations for each zone.

Warmup’s technical team, and others, provide this as a free service for new build projects. The design accounts for the floor plan, the expected floor finish over the slab (tiles have lower thermal resistance than carpet; timber is higher), and the number of independent zones the homeowner wants.

Most families want at minimum three zones in a new home: wet areas (bathrooms and laundry), the open-plan living zone, and optionally the bedrooms. Each zone has its own thermostat, which means each can be controlled independently — and with smart WiFi thermostats, the entire system is manageable from your phone.

The cost conversation

For a standard four-bedroom single-storey home in a growth corridor — think Springfield or Ormiston in SEQ, Craigieburn or Werribee in Melbourne, Alkimos or Ellenbrook in Perth — the installed cost of inslab heating for the full home at the construction stage is typically in the range of $4,000 to $8,000 depending on floor area, zone count, and thermostat specification.

On a $600,000 to $700,000 house-and-land package, that represents roughly one to one-and-a-half percent of the build cost. On a 30-year mortgage, the additional weekly repayment is negligible. The system adds measurably to the appraised value of the home, lasts indefinitely, costs a small amount per day to run, and eliminates the cold-floor problem permanently.

It is one of the most cost-effective inclusions available at the new-build stage. The reason it is not universal is simply that people do not know to ask for it.

After the build: undertile is the answer

If you have already moved into a new home and the slab is poured, you have not missed out entirely. Undertile heating can be installed during any bathroom or kitchen renovation, at any time, in any existing home. It will not give you the whole-floor thermal mass performance of inslab heating in a living area, but for bathrooms and kitchens — the rooms where the cold-floor problem is most acute — it works exactly as well.

If you are thinking about underfloor heating for the first time and you are wondering where to start, nearly everyone gives you the same answer: the bathroom. And they are right — but the reason why is worth understanding, because it changes how you think about adding more rooms later.

Why the bathroom is always first

Australian homes are not cold the way northern European homes are cold. We do not have minus-twenty winters. What we have are eight to fifteen degree overnight temperatures in most of the major southern cities — cold enough that getting out of bed and walking across a tile floor in bare feet is genuinely unpleasant, but not so cold that the whole-house heating problem dominates every decision.

The bathroom concentrates that problem. Tile holds cold better than any other common floor material. It does not warm up from ambient temperature the way timber does. A bathroom that sits at 12 degrees overnight will still feel cold underfoot at 7am even if the house has warmed to 18. And bathrooms are where you are most exposed — wet feet, minimal clothing, no way to avoid the floor.

This is why undertile heating in a bathroom is the most impactful comfort upgrade most Australians can make per dollar spent. You are solving the problem at the exact point where the cold is actually felt.

What about the kitchen?

Kitchens are the second most common installation, and for good reason. Tiled kitchens — particularly in older Melbourne and Sydney homes where tessellated tiles or slate extend from the bathroom across the kitchen floor — present the same cold-floor problem. In a kitchen, you stand for longer periods. Cold tiles become fatiguing in a way they are not in a bathroom where you are moving.

Kitchen undertile heating is an excellent second installation. It is also a natural extension of a bathroom renovation project — if the tiler is already on site and the electrician is already scheduled, adding the kitchen at the same time reduces both the cost per square metre and the disruption.

The caveat: avoid heating beneath the refrigerator, dishwasher, and cabinetry with plywood bases. These areas do not benefit from heating and the element should not be installed beneath fixed appliances. Most installation guides and technical support teams will walk you through the exclusion zones.

Bedrooms: often overlooked, high reward in cold climates

In Canberra, Hobart, Ballarat, and similar high-altitude or inland cold-climate locations, carpeted bedrooms are often where Australians feel the cold most acutely — not the tile floor in the bathroom, but the moment when your feet hit carpet that has been sitting at 8 degrees all night.

Undercarpet heating solves this without requiring any tiling. An ultra-thin mat installs between the carpet and underlay during carpet installation or replacement, connects to a thermostat, and provides gentle radiant warmth through the carpet pile. The floor sensor on the thermostat prevents overheating, and the soft warmth through carpet on a Hobart winter morning is distinctly different from the sharp cold it replaces.

For families with young children who play on the floor in winter, bedroom and living area floor heating is not a luxury — it is a genuine quality-of-life improvement.

Living areas: where inslab heating shines

The large open-plan living, dining, and kitchen zones that dominate Australian residential design present a challenge for undertile heating systems because the floor area is large and the energy cost of heating it all through tile is significant.

This is where inslab heating — installed during new home construction — makes the most sense. A concrete slab heated from within is not trying to warm just the tile surface. It is warming a large thermal mass that releases heat slowly and evenly. Combined with good insulation, double glazing, and a smart thermostat that pre-heats the slab during off-peak hours, an inslab system in an open-plan living zone delivers whole-room comfort without the running cost of heating the air.

For existing homes, a floor-to-ceiling renovation that includes a new screed layer can make inscreed heating feasible for large living areas. But the floor height addition needs to be accounted for carefully.

The rooms to skip (or do last)

Formal dining rooms used twice a week. Spare bedrooms rarely occupied. Hallways that people walk through but do not inhabit. These are not worth the installation cost until the rooms you actually live in are done.

The logical order for most Australian homes: bathroom first, kitchen second, master bedroom third if you are in a cold climate. Living areas as part of a new build or major renovation. Everything else is a bonus.

A note on zoning

When you have multiple rooms with underfloor heating systems, each requires its own thermostat — or you need a multi-zone controller. This is not a limitation; it is an advantage. The bathroom does not need to run at the same time as the bedroom. The thermostat schedules for each room can be set independently, which means you only run each zone when it is being used.

Underfloor heating solutions changed how our family experiences winter at home — and after living with the system for a full year, there are things worth sharing that most buying guides won't tell you. This isn't a sponsored review or a technical spec sheet. It's the real story of how one Australian family researched, compared, installed, and ultimately fell in love with radiant floor heating — and which brand earned their trust when it counted.

The Moment It Became a Priority

It started with a freezing July morning in Sydney. The kids refused to get out of bed because the bathroom tiles were, in their words, "like ice." Fair point. Between a wall-mounted heater that took twenty minutes to warm the room and tiles cold enough to make morning routines genuinely unpleasant, something had to change.

The conversation quickly moved from "we should look into this" to proper research mode. What followed was about three weeks of comparing brands, reading forums, getting quotes, and eventually making a decision that the whole family has since endorsed enthusiastically.

The Research Phase: So Many Brands, So Much Confusion

Searching for floor heating Australia online opens a door to an almost overwhelming number of options. Warmup Australia, Cold Buster, Thermogroup, Hotwire, Warmtech, Comfort Heat, Devex — the list goes on. Every brand has a website telling you they're the best option. None of them make it particularly easy to understand what actually differentiates them.

The approach that eventually worked was breaking the decision down into four questions:

What floor types does it work with? (Their bathroom has large-format tiles, their living area has engineered timber.)

Can running costs be controlled intelligently? (Energy bills already felt high enough.)

What happens if something goes wrong in five or ten years?

Who installs it, and are they easy to find?

Those four questions eliminated several brands almost immediately and brought Warmup Australia into clear focus.

Why Warmup Australia Kept Coming to the Top

The Smart Thermostat Changed Everything

One thing that wasn't anticipated going into this process: how much the thermostat would matter. Warmup Australia's smart thermostat range — particularly the 4iE WiFi Thermostat — genuinely impressed during the research phase and has exceeded expectations in daily use.

The ability to set heating schedules means the bathroom floor is already warm when the alarm goes off. The kids step out of bed onto warm tiles. Nobody complains. The morning routine runs smoother. It sounds like a small thing. It isn't.

The app also shows energy consumption in real time, which matters more than expected. Being able to see exactly what the electric underfloor heating costs to run each day — and adjust schedules accordingly — has kept the system from becoming an expensive habit. In practice, running costs have been very manageable.

The Warranty Made the Decision Easier

Warmup Australia offers a 25-year warranty on their heating elements. For a product that gets embedded in a floor and covered in tiles, that kind of long-term backing isn't just reassuring — it's a statement about confidence in the product's quality. No other brand reviewed during the research phase offered anything close to that level of commitment.

It reframed the pricing conversation entirely. Yes, Warmup Australia costs more upfront than Cold Buster or a budget alternative. But a 25-year warranty on the heating element means the system should outlast the tiles above it. That's genuinely long-term value.

The Installer Network Made the Process Easy

Searching for underfloor heating near me led to finding a Warmup Australia certified installer fairly quickly. The installer was familiar with the product range, knew exactly how to handle the underfloor heating installation under large-format tiles, and walked through the process clearly before starting work.

For anyone in Sydney or other major Australian cities, finding a qualified installer through Warmup's network is straightforward. The process from first call to completed installation was smooth, professional, and finished on schedule.

What Was Installed — and How It Performs

Two rooms were done in the first phase: the main bathroom (approximately 9 sqm) and the ensuite (approximately 5 sqm). A third room — the home's main living area — was added six months later after seeing how well the first two performed.

Bathroom (9 sqm): Dual-conductor cable under large-format tiles. Scheduled to warm up from 6:00am on weekday mornings. Consistently reaches target temperature before the first family member is up.

Ensuite (5 sqm): Heated mat system under tiles. Used more casually, run on demand rather than a strict schedule.

Living Area (approx. 22 sqm): Warmup Australia's foil system under engineered timber. This was the most discussed decision — electric in-floor heat under timber requires careful product selection. Warmup's foil system is specifically designed for this application. After one full winter, it's performing exactly as described.

The Costs — Being Honest About the Numbers

Underfloor heating installation cost for their project broke down roughly as follows:

Bathroom (9 sqm): ~$1,100 including labour and thermostat

Ensuite (5 sqm): ~$650 including labour and thermostat

Living area (22 sqm): ~$2,200 including labour and smart thermostat

These are real-world figures from a Sydney installation in 2024. Costs will vary by location, electrician rates, and the specific Warmup Australia products chosen.

Running costs have added an estimated $20–$40 per month to the electricity bill across winter months, with smart scheduling keeping usage tight. That's considered genuinely reasonable for the comfort delivered.

What Would Be Done Differently?

Do it earlier. The only real regret is not committing to radiant floor heating sooner. The research phase felt intimidating, but in hindsight, Warmup Australia's support team and the installer made the whole process accessible.

Start with more rooms. There was a temptation to start small and see how it went. After the first installation, it was clear that expanding was the right call. Having done all three rooms in one project would have saved some coordination time.

The Bottom Line: A Personal Recommendation

For any Australian family weighing up underfloor heating solutions — particularly for bathrooms, kitchens, or living areas — the experience points clearly toward Warmup Australia as the brand most worth choosing.

The product quality is evident from day one. The smart thermostat makes the system genuinely liveable and cost-effective. The 25-year warranty means this isn't a decision that needs to be revisited. And the installer experience — professional, knowledgeable, efficient — reflects well on how Warmup Australia supports the people selling and installing their systems.

Cold Buster and Thermogroup serve real markets, and they're not bad products. But for a family making a meaningful investment in floor heating Australia-wide, the difference in quality, technology, and long-term support is noticeable enough to justify choosing the better option.

This comparison comes up constantly and is almost always framed incorrectly. Ducted heating and underfloor heating are not competing solutions to the same problem — they are solving different problems, and understanding that changes which one you need.

What ducted heating actually does

Ducted gas or electric heating pushes warm air through ceiling or floor vents into multiple rooms simultaneously. It is whole-home heating — the intent is to bring every room to a liveable temperature quickly.

Done well, it works. Australian homes built since the 1990s with a ducted gas system can go from overnight temperatures to comfortable living temperatures in 20 to 30 minutes on a cold Melbourne morning.

The problem is what happens after the air heats up. Warm air rises. In a standard Australian home with 2.4-metre ceilings, the warmest air is at ceiling height and the coolest air is at floor level — exactly where you and your family spend your time. A thermostat set to 20 degrees and mounted on a wall at 1.2 metres reads 20 degrees while your ankles are sitting in 16-degree air and your floor tiles are at 12 degrees.

Ducted heating is also expensive. A gas ducted system costs $4,000 to $8,000 installed and has annual servicing costs. Electric ducted systems cost more to run than gas equivalents at current electricity tariffs. Ongoing maintenance — filter cleaning, duct inspection, compressor servicing — adds cost that most homeowners underestimate.

What underfloor heating does differently

Radiant floor heating warms the floor surface directly. Heat radiates upward from the floor — which is how radiant heat actually travels — and the temperature gradient in the room is inverted compared to a ducted system. The floor is warm, the air near the floor is warm, and comfort is achieved at a lower air temperature than conventional heating systems require.

This is not a theoretical benefit. Studies from European heating markets — where underfloor heating has been the standard residential specification for 30 years — consistently show that radiant floor heating achieves equivalent perceived warmth at air temperatures 2 to 3 degrees lower than convective heating. Lower air temperature means lower energy use.

Electric radiant floor heating systems also have no ductwork to lose heat through. Ducted systems in Australian homes commonly lose 20 to 30 percent of their heat output through duct leakage and conduction before the warm air reaches the room. An underfloor heating system delivers its heat directly to the surface with no losses in transit.

The real cost comparison

For a four-bedroom home in Melbourne, a ducted gas heating system costs approximately $5,000 to $8,000 installed. Annual gas bills for heating: $600 to $1,200 depending on usage. Annual servicing: $150 to $300. Over 15 years — the typical lifespan before major maintenance or replacement — total cost: $14,000 to $26,000.

For the same home with inslab electric underfloor heating installed during construction: $4,000 to $8,000 installed. Annual electricity running cost for a scheduled system: $200 to $500 depending on floor area and tariff. No annual servicing required. 25-year product guarantee. Over 15 years: $7,000 to $15,000 total.

The numbers overlap at the high end of underfloor and the low end of ducted. But the underfloor system has a 25-year guarantee with minimal ongoing maintenance. The ducted system will likely need compressor replacement, duct cleaning, and potentially full system replacement within that period.

Where ducted heating still wins

Whole-home air conditioning — systems that heat in winter and cool in summer — cannot be replicated by underfloor heating. If you want a single system that manages both heating and cooling, a ducted reverse-cycle system with good zoning remains the most practical solution for most Australian homes.

Underfloor heating solves the floor temperature problem. It does not solve the summer cooling problem. In Queensland, Western Australia, and coastal New South Wales, the cooling load typically dominates the air conditioning conversation. In those climates, the most practical outcome is often a ducted reverse-cycle system for cooling plus targeted underfloor heating for the wet areas where the cold-floor problem is most acute in winter.

What the combination looks like in practice

The most comfortable and cost-effective outcome for most Australian homes in cold-climate cities is not an either/or decision. It is:

Inslab heating (in a new build) or undertile heating (in renovations) for bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen — the rooms with tile floors where the cold-floor problem is felt most acutely. A smart thermostat for each zone.

A reverse-cycle split system in the main living area for cooling in summer and supplementary heating on the coldest days when you want the whole room warm quickly.