Energy Saving Devices for Your Home

1: Smart meters

Old-school gas and electricity meters aren’t very forthright about your energy use. They slowly tick upwards, but the numbers are long and opaque and only make sense when you submit them to your energy supplier and receive the bill.

Next-generation smart meters are wireless-enabled. They transmit real-time data about your energy use not just to your supplier (eliminating the need for meter readings) but also to an in-house display (IHD) you should keep in a visible location, such as on your kitchen surface. From there, you can track just how much money you’re spending on gas and electricity, not just in kilowatt-hours but in pounds and pence. As you change your behaviours and bring on board other energy-saving devices, you can see how your consumption and spending fall. After all, it’s tricky to save energy if you don’t know how much you’re using.

The best part? You can get a smart meter for free from your energy supplier. Energy suppliers have already installed smart meters in about 67% of British households.^[1] If the rollout hasn’t reached you yet, contact your supplier.

2: Smart thermostats

Smart thermostats are internet-connected devices that give you greater control over your home heating, with many energy-saving opportunities. Popular models claim to save users anywhere from 8% to 31% on their heating costs.^[2]

Common features of smart thermostats are:

• Geofencing: Automatically turning your heat down when you leave the house or even a room

• Zonal controls: Allowing you to set different temperatures for separate rooms

• Weather adaptation: Adjusting heat to weather forecasts

• Remote control and scheduling: Enabling you to change temperatures from afar and in advance via an app

• Pattern recognition: Tracking and analysing your heat use and automatically adjusting temperatures to match

The best smart thermostats on the market include:

3: Thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs)

Thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) give you more control over the amount of heat your radiators are putting out. Instead of two settings, on and off, they have multiple, so you can set the temperature you’d like to achieve in the room. For instance, setting 2 may equal 15°C and 3 may equal 20°C.

TRVs have temperature sensors and switch off the flow of hot water into the radiator when your desired temperature is reached. This prevents you from overheating rooms, giving your boiler a break and reducing its energy use.

Use thermostatic radiator valves to focus heat on your home office during the day, your living room in the evenings, and bedrooms before bed, for example. Energy technology trade body BEAMA estimates TRVs can save you an average of 18% on your home heating bills.^[6]

4: Smart plugs

Appliances left in standby mode and chargers plugged into fully charged devices could be adding up to £45 to your energy bills each year.^[7] Smart plugs make it easier than ever to ensure you’ve not left anything unnecessary plugged in.

Smart plugs connect to your home’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth networks and can be monitored and turned on or off by an app or through a home assistant such as Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant. Smart plugs give you remote and scheduling control over any device plugged into them, so you can have the kettle boiling as you walk through the door or flip off the outlet charging your tablet when it’s fully charged. You can even reassure yourself that you definitely didn’t leave your iron plugged in when you left the house.

The best smart plugs can even monitor your energy use to help estimate your bills. And they’re available for under £15 per plug.

5: Energy-saving shower heads

Showers are an indispensable part of our daily routines but the cost can really rack up. A typical 10-minute shower will cost you 16p with a gas shower and 43p with an electric shower, not including the cost of water. Repeat that daily and that’s £58 to £157 a year, per person.^[8]

You can reduce the cost of your daily shower with an eco-friendly shower head. These shower heads restrict flow rates, from a typical 8-10 litres per minute to 5-6 litres, reducing the amount of water that needs to be heated and thus your energy costs. The very best can reduce water use by 60%, meaning big savings, especially if you have multiple family members queuing for the shower.

Despite the lower flow rate, eco-friendly shower heads don’t feel any different than normal shower heads. That’s because they use clever aeration technology, which produces smaller water droplets, reducing water use without compromising pressure.

Unfortunately, eco shower heads aren’t much good with electric showers and can even damage them. In these cases, you can save money by switching to a gas shower and drawing heated water from your boiler.

6: Radiator reflectors

Forget smart devices. One of the very best energy-saving objects is deceptively simple: a thin sheet of reflective material, often aluminium, slid between your radiators and the walls.

Radiators radiate heat both into the room and toward the wall they’re installed on. Radiator reflectors prevent heat from being lost through the wall, by reflecting it back into the room. Radiator reflectors are most impactful when used with radiators installed on external walls, especially uninsulated solid walls.

Manufacturer Radflek claims that its radiator reflectors, sold for £24.49 for a three-pack, can reduce heat transfer through walls by as much as 45%.^[9] In a home built before 1976, with cavity walls, these reflectors can trim your heating costs by £2.75 per radiator per year.^[10] Your rooms will also feel more comfortable.

7: Clothes drying rack

Another low-tech, energy-saving device is the clothes drying rack, a green alternative to the energy-hungry tumble dryer.

A typical tumble dryer uses 4.5kWh of electricity per cycle.^[11] At 2025 electricity prices, that’s a cost of £1.16 per cycle.^[12] Run your dryer three times a week and you could be looking at an annual bill of £180.

Clothes drying racks, available for as little as £15, dry your garments for free, using just the air.

While the most basic unheated models are great for warm summer days, simple air drying might be too slow for some households during cold, damp winters. Heated drying racks are the solution. They use electricity to warm clothes as they dry and can still deliver savings compared to tumble dryers. The very best cost just 6p per hour to run and can dry a full load of laundry in just two hours, meaning they cost a fraction of what tumble dryers do.^[13]

Another money-saving benefit of drying racks: your clothes will last longer. Tumble dryers are rough on fabrics (think of the tufts found in your dryer’s lint collector) and can reduce the lifespan of garments, forcing you to replace them sooner.

8: Energy-efficient light bulbs

The UK phased out inefficient halogen light bulbs in 2021, with fluorescent bulbs following in 2024, in favour of more efficient LED bulbs.^[14] As these older bulbs have now been off the market for a while, your home is likely already fitted with LEDs.

However, not all LED bulbs are created equally. Like other appliances, they’re assigned efficiency ratings of A (best) to G (worst). The very best on the market - Osram Ultra-Efficient LED Light Bulbs, the only A-rated bulb on the market in the UK - uses 60% less electricity than other LED bulbs.^[15] Because lighting accounts for 11% of the typical household energy bill in the UK, that could mean huge savings.^[16]

And forget dragging out a ladder to swap them: these lights can last for 50,000 hours, 50 years with typical use. Just make sure you remember to flick the switch when you’re leaving the room.^[15]

9: Motion sensor lights

Not to sound like your parent, but did you remember to switch off the lights before you left the house this morning? Lighting unused rooms adds around £8 to our energy bills each year, according to the Energy Saving Trust.^[7]

If you don’t trust yourself or your kids to switch off the lights, invest in motion sensor lights. With motion detection, lights only turn on when someone enters the room and then automatically flick off after a period of inactivity. While you might not want to use them in your living room, where you might be plunged into darkness while you watch TV, they’re great for less-used spaces, such as cupboards, bathrooms, and hallways. Their hands-free operation is also convenient, so you don’t have to fumble for the light switch in a darkened room or juggle bags to hit the switch as you’re bringing groceries in.

10: Air fryers

Air fryers are the kitchen appliance of the decade, having transformed the way many of us prepare dinner. In addition to being healthier, frying foods with little to no oil, and quicker, air fryers are also more energy efficient than ovens and hobs.

Air fryers achieve their energy efficiency due to their compact size and their method of rapidly circulating hot air to cook foods. In contrast, ovens are several times as big and heat that entire space. That means a bigger appetite for electricity: a typical 2.5-4.5 kilowatts (kW) per hour, compared to an air fryer's lean diet of 1.4-1.7kWh.^[17][18]

Air fryers also cook food more quickly, often without preheating: cooking times are typically 20% faster with an air fryer.^[19] So if a recipe takes 45 minutes with an oven, you can do it in 36 with an air fryer. You'll get dinner on the table sooner, and save money by reducing the time the device is on.

How much can an air fryer save you? That recipe calling for 45 minutes in an oven would cost you around 46p of electricity to make. Use an air fryer and you'll use just half of that, or 23p. If you’re preparing meals nightly, the savings can really rack up, covering the cost of an air fryer in a year or less.