Why Is My Room So Hot (Compared to the Rest of My House): 5 Possible Reasons

Although you don’t want a room to be too cold and chilly, you don’t want it too hot either. After all, you can always put on more clothes, but you can’t always take more off. Especially if the rest of your home is cool and comfortable, there’s nothing worse than a bedroom that is boiling hot.

There are a couple of potential reasons why your bedroom is stuffy when the rest of your home is cool. It’s important to determine why your bedroom feels hot so that you can fix the problem.

Below, we will look at the five most common reasons that individual rooms get hotter than the rest of the house. Let’s get started.

The 5 Reasons Your Room Is Hotter Than the Rest of Your House

1. Faulty Air Ducts

The air ducts are what allow the cool air to travel from your AC to all the rooms in your home. If the air ducts become clogged or broken down, the air won’t reach all the rooms appropriately. If you know you have old air ducts or haven’t checked them out in a while, the air ducts could be to blame.

What to Do About It

To determine if your air ducts are the problem, you will need to inspect the air ducts. If you notice cracks, dust, and other buildup, you have found the culprit for your hot room.

Depending on what you found during your inspection, you will need to clean, repair, or replace your air ducts. Dirt buildup or clogs can be easy to clean out, but air ducts over 15 years old may need total replacement. Talk to an HVAC specialist when dealing with your air duct system.

2. Bad Insulation

The purpose of your home’s insulation is to keep cool air in and the hot air out or vice versa. If you have an old house, the insulation might not be effective anymore, allowing the cool air to escape the home as soon as it is pumped into your room.

What to Do About It

You can determine if you have bad insulation by doing a home energy audit. You can also talk to an HVAC professional who can check out the insulation and determine if it needs to be replaced.

If your insulation needs to be replaced, you can add cellulose insulation or loose-fill insulation. It’s best to hire a professional to do this for you. Most likely, you will only need to do this if the insulation in your home is 80 years or older.

3. Room Placement

The placement of your room, and the features within it, can be causing it to feel hotter. For example, rooms on an upper level get hotter than the rooms below it since heat rises. Likewise, the number of windows in your room or the distance from the bedroom to the AC can all impact how hot it gets.

What to Do About It

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to fix a stuffy room that is hot because of placement. After all, you won’t be able to change the location of the room, and you probably don’t want to remove any windows.

With this in mind, the best thing to do about a room that’s hot because of its placement is to either add a fan in the room or to talk to an HVAC specialist. A specialist may be able to evaluate the room and determine if they have any ways to make it cooler. Most likely, they will recommend fans.

4. Poorly Placed Thermostat

It’s important that your thermostat is placed on an interior wall close to where your family spends most of their time. If the thermostat is on an exterior wall or in a room with frequently warm temperatures, such as in a kitchen or laundry room, the rest of your house will get boiling fast.

The reason for this is that poorly placed thermostats will not be calibrated correctly. This can make it difficult to program the system to your preferred temperature.

What to Do About It

If it’s obvious that your thermostat is not placed in the right location, you will need to move it. Unless you are an experienced DIYer who has time with electrical work and drilling, you should hire a professional to do this task. It won’t be too expensive or take too much time, but it can greatly improve the comfortability of your room.

5. AC Isn’t Powerful Enough

Sometimes, ACs are too small, but this fact isn’t discovered until after installation. If the AC is not large enough, it won’t be able to cool down all rooms evenly. Instead, some rooms will be comfortable, whereas the others will be too hot.

What to Do About It

If your AC is not powerful enough, there are two things you can do. You can purchase a whole new AC, which will be the most efficient option, but it will be the most expensive too. If you don’t want to purchase a new AC unit, you can also install a fan or get a portable fan to put inside the stuffy rooms.

How Can I Keep My Room Cool?

If you cannot seem to keep your room cool, the best thing to do is to contact an HVAC specialist. Most likely, you have some issue in your HVAC system that needs to be addressed by a professional. In the meantime, use fans to keep the room cool. In a worst-case scenario, you might need to use fans in the future, too, such as if room placement is to blame.

Final Thoughts: Why is My Room So Hot

If your room gets stuffy, but the rest of your house is comfortable, the air ducts, insulation, room placement, thermostat, or AC could be to blame. It’s important to evaluate all aspects of your home to determine what the problem is and fix it accordingly.

Most likely, you should get your room to a comfortable temperature by doing the things above. If not, you can always get a portable fan or install a fan on your ceiling to circulate the air and keep it cool.

See Also: 

• Why is My House Hotter than Outside? What You Need To Know!
• 12 Air Conditioning Facts and Statistics

Featured Image Credit: Piqsels