Oh, the warm days of summer! When everyone gets lots of fresh air in the out-of-doors, and our family’s three-season porch is our dining room for evening meals most nights. When we get to go on family camping trips, and the kids return to the happy places they’ve found at summer camp over the years. The opportunities for quality family time – especially quality screen-free time – are endless. But when winter comes, it’s hard to get outside together for family fun. With colder temps and shorter days, all anyone wants to do is hibernate inside.

Enter the concept of winter cozy, popularized in recent years by the Danish term “hygge.” While the word hygge itself is about hunkering down indoors with family and friends for time well spent together during the dark days of winter, the term has come to suggest indoor winter coziness more generally to those of us outside of Denmark.

Either way, a cozy home in the dark of winter DOES make it easier to spend quality time with those you love. So to make sure you’re still having as much fun and family time when you’re cooped up indoors, here are some ways you can make your house cozy for the winter ahead.

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How To Make Your House Cozy For Winter

1. Get Your Furnace Serviced

Trust me, being in a cold house in the winter because your heating system broke is NOT fun! This is why you need to get your heating system checked out every fall by the pros. They’ll clean out the crud (which will make your system run more efficiently), and fix any problems they notice. This means you’re less likely to have something break when it’s super-cold outside.

When you arrange for service, ask about the company’s “service contract.” If you sign up for your fall (and spring, if you have central air) service contract, what you’re officially paying for is these 1-2 seasonal checkups. But what you’ll also get is priority service (and often a discount) if you need heater repair work on a Saturday night. When it’s below freezing out, you don’t want to be without heat for a minute longer than you have to!

2. Get Out Your Favorite Winter Warmers

As soon as temps start to cool each fall, I get out my favorite warm winter slippers and my ankle-length fuzzy robe. These old friends help keep me warm, both literally and metaphorically; I LOVE snuggling up in them.

Likewise, besides new fleece pajamas in their current sizes (my teens still love their fleece even though they’re now into adult sizes!), I make sure my girls have warm slippers and cuddly robes for when the weather gets cold. We store our slippers in the shoe rack just inside the door. That way, as soon as we get home we can slip them on to keep our feet cozy warm. And my kiddos adore the coziness of fleece so much, they’ll often change into them as soon as they’re off the bus after school.

If you don’t have these yet and live in a chillier climate, consider putting them on your Christmas list. Especially the ankle-length robe; this was a game-changer for me. And for your littlest kiddos, make sure you’ve got footed pajamas on the list, too. When my girls were younger, they would get so excited when winter returned and they could wear their footed PJs again. They loved lounging in them all day Saturday, and would put them on right after school just like they do now with their big-kid-sized fleece lounge sets.

3. Change Your Light Fixtures

Lighting has more power to affect how hot or cold a room is than you’d think. Because fluorescent bulbs give off a bluish light, they won’t automatically make you think “warm” as much as warmer light colors will. On top of that, if you have overhead lighting opening up the whole room in an impersonal way, you’re going to feel colder than ever!

So get some table and standing lamps, and some darker lampshades, and switch these on rather than your main light switch. It’s a lot cozier for family game night or a good Christmas movie.

(And while you’re at it, consider getting a full-spectrum floor lamp or two, to help combat shorter days and Seasonal Affective Disorder. This was at the top of my Christmas wish list last year, and I use it every morning as soon as I get up to help “wake up” my body when it’s still dark outside!)

4. Fix Those Drafts

Now’s the time to put the storm windows down and check to make sure you don’t have any other drafts. There’s nothing worse than a cold draft when you’re trying to get cozy. Check with your energy supplier to see if they offer an energy audit. Some will do this for free. Others will charge, but will leave you with goodies like free energy-efficient bulbs (that’s what ours does). The point of an audit is to help you spot ways to conserve energy over the winter, like sealing up those drafty windows.

Once you’ve found where you’re leaking heat, get some window sealing kits to block the drafts all winter long. (We actually keep the insulating film on our glass doors to our back porch year-round, because it also helps with blocking the summer heat.)

It’s also time to check your heating vents and make sure they’re ready to deliver. If you have central air, you may need to flip your heat vents (as we do) so that the top vents are closed and the bottom ones are open. Also reverse the direction of your ceiling fans. And finally, be sure that your radiators or heat vents are clean and free of dust, so they don’t blow grime around your house while distributing your heat!

5. Consider Your Winter Heat Plan

Just like you want to get your furnace serviced in the fall BEFORE it’s doing heavy duty, the months BEFORE winter are a great time to consider whether your winter warming needs an upgrade. Case in point: Our living room has a vaulted ceiling and skylights, and is regularly 5-10 degrees colder than the rest of the house in the middle of winter. It also (when we bought the house) had a wood-burning fireplace. Which we never used, because of the air pollution that burning wood creates for our house of asthmatics.

So right before the pandemic, we finally were able to upgrade our fireplace with a heat-radiating gas fireplace insert. The room that used to be so cold and drafty all winter is now our favorite room to hang out in, thanks to that fireplace. The kids love it so much, they even strip off their fleecies sometimes to dress like it’s summer – then sit or lie down right in front of the fireplace. There’s just nothing like cozying up in front of the fire on a chilly winter day in our favorite room.

Is your family ready for winter? What about your home? With these tips, you'll know how to make your house cozy for winter in no time flat! — Essie reading in front of the fireplace and basking in its warmth

Running our natural-gas fireplace is an inexpensive supplement to our regular heat source, and our regular heat already comes from a cost-effective heat pump. Depending on what part of the country you live in, if there is any chance your fall inspection suggests it’s time to replace your current heating system, consider if there is a more energy-efficient and cost-effective way to heat your home this coming winter. Nothing is worse than keeping your heat set super-low because you’re afraid of sky-high heating bills!

While heat pumps are expensive upfront, they are becoming popular in more parts of the country because the cost to run them (once installed) is SO much cheaper than other forms of heating, especially oil-burning furnaces. Or if you have some other form of electric-based heating and have been considering solar for awhile, the sooner you get those panels installed, the sooner you can trim your winter heating budget to a more manageable size.

6. Stock Up On Warm Treats

Whenever my girls have been out playing in the snow, as soon as they come in they want a cup of hot cocoa. Their friends in the neighborhood know this, and love to pop in for cocoa whenever they’re playing with our girls outside. So I need to make sure we always have plenty of milk and cocoa on hand. I keep the cocoa in a basket in the cupboard, along with mini marshmallows and peppermints or candy canes. This way I’m always ready for a winter warmup for the girls.

While this makes a great occasional treat for the girls, it’s not very practical for a daily warm-up for me while I’m at home working. So I also keep plenty of teas on hand for winter days. That way I can put the kettle on whenever I need a quick warm-up, and make myself a pot of tea. I also have a tea cozy that my mama made for me, to help keep the pot warm for me.

7. Have a ‘Cuddle Corner’

And one last quick idea: Pick a chair to designate as the ‘cuddle corner’, cover it in blankets and cushions, and let yourself or anyone else in the family snuggle down there whenever you want. It’s a great comfort spot when the weather outside is nasty, and you’re arrived from work or school covered in rain with muddy boots!

You don’t even have to limit yourself to one “cuddle corner.” You can have them scattered around the house. We have a rocking chair with a side table in our living room that is the perfect snuggle spot for curling up with a good book. The girls have similar “cozy nooks” in their room, which they’ve decked out with Squishmallows, cushions, and their bean bags for a cozy spot to read in. They love curling up there for some quiet time.

Your house can be the coziest place you’ve ever walked into, as long as you’ve got some good design choices, the right snuggly clothes, and plenty of blankets on your side!

What’s YOUR favorite tip for cozying up your home for the winter? Let us know in the comments!

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