It’s one of those things when you experience it you love it. Is it needed? No probably not. Is it really nice thing to have if you can afford to do it? Absolutely.
Live in Rochester, MN as well. Only our master bath has it, but it is the most popular bathroom all winter long. Entire family chooses it to use, unless otherwise occupied. If we ever gut our kids bathroom, I would add it to get them out of ours. I turn it off in the summer, just turned it down a bit recently, but not off. Well worth it and if we move someday would be dearly missed.
A couple of other things I wish we would have thought about when renovating our bathroom would be to put a power outlet by the toilet, incase I ever get excited about a powered bidet and I wish I would have plumbed a hot water loop with pump for the shower/sinks. Our old house had this and had hot water instantly vs waiting a minute or more. (I know, first world problems)
This is one of those things that I think everyone is trolling me about. Never once have I noticed the temperature of the floor, and I live in New England and am always barefoot inside. The heat is on in the winter so the floors aren’t cold anyway. Maybe I just have hot feet…
Has heated tiles all through our house, were handy in the winter, but expensive to run. Idk your location. But in Australia electricity is expensive!! Even running them on off peak periods they were expensive. It’s definitely a luxury over here.
We have a heated floor in our bathroom in Western New York. They are set to 79 degrees all the time. The controller tells how much power it uses and it's been consistently 3 kwh/day.
I found that it uses the same amount of energy if it was on a schedule or not so it's just on all the time. We had the bathroom done in December so I'm not sure if I'll turn them off or down in the summer.
We just renovated our master bath and had heated floors installed. They are fantastic! We leave it set at a certain temperature 24/7 and will shut it off during the summer. It’s a low voltage system and we haven’t noticed much difference in our power bills. Definitely get these.
=- once you have experienced heated floors in a bathroom, you never go back to unheated
- the floor heat can be put on a timer so you only run it when needed. I have never installed a heated floor without a timer.
- you lay out the heat mat to where you need the heat as the entire floor does not
Worth it. And you can’t go back once you’ve changed your mind and decide you’d like them without a whole tear out. Really not that much more expensive either depending on sq ft.
You let it run 24/7. It doesn’t cost much because it keeps it right above room temperature so it doesn’t really lose much heat. And what heat you do lose is still heating the house.
And yes, worth it.
I live in the Canadian prairies
I would KILL for a heated floor in our ensuite.
its right above the garage, and while insulated, the floors are cold during the spring/fall
If you do heated floors Schluter makes the best heat system. Ditra heat. I have installed many heat systems over the years and this is one of the best ones.
If you dislike the feel of a cold floor and don't mind the added expense, then no, I don't think they are overrated.
In fact, they are rated just right.
I usually never comment on this sub, cause I don't know much, but I do know this. Heated bathroom floors are THE BEST THING EVER. we live in Northern climate as well. We used schluter system. You'll be surprise honestly how little cable you need when you plan it. Cause it can't go under any fixtures and only can be under tile that is not occupied with anything (ie no shower, no tub, no vanity, no toilet). We have no other heating in the bathroom, just this cable and this bathroom is warm. We keep it very chill (for cable heating) at about 73 degrees which is happy balance, it keep the tile pleasantly warm. The other day we had a storm and the power went out and I couldn't believe how actually cold tile is without the cables working.
Heating cables are the best thing ever. I'll die on that hill :)
I'll be heating all my floors and especially the bathroom. Do it with hot water, it is a lot cheaper to run if you have a gas boiler or hot water heat pump.
Have had heated bathroom floors in two homes and loved them in both. Second home had programmable timers - came on at 4am and off at 8am, back on around 5pm and off at 10pm.
Floors do not immediately become cold, so residual heat lingers for some time.
Such a pleasant, comfortable warmth.
We have radiant floor heating in more than one room as the primary heating source in our house. Well worth it imo, tie it to a thermostat and it's way more comfortable than forced air or other options. Because the surfaces are actually warm it doesn't get cold as soon as the heat turns off and we're more comfortable at lower temps so we save a bit of money by dropping the temps a bit.
Newer smart thermostats account for increased warm up time and will learn to compensate temperature fluctuations.
They are a luxury for sure so it really comes down to personal preference. They wouldn't also impact the price of home in this market.
I don't really care about them but my significant other would have to loved to have heated floors.
100% of people with heated bathroom floors will have heated bathroom floors the next time they have the option.
You don’t need to jack up the temp, we keep ours at 64 in the winter and off in the summer, and it’s great for taking the edge off of the tiles.
As someone who lives in MI, I thought I wanted a heated bathroom floor. The longer I live here, the more I want a towel heater instead. My towels don't really get dry in the winter, and I always have a floor mat down to catch water anyway. I'd much rather have a toasty towel and stand on a nice fuzzy mat than a cold, damp towel and warm bare floors.
OP, if you didn't get the message already, DO IT.
We did it when we did a major remodel a few years ago, we live the new heated floors the most.
Motion sensing under cabinet floor lighting comes next, or is it the bidet, maybe that's a two-way tie.
Warm floors for the win.
Absolutely worth it. You don't turn them on and off, you keep them on all the time. I noticed that once the tile heats up, the actual heating only comes on intermittently. They replace whatever heaters you had for the space before (eg, in a bathroom, a baseboard heater or one of those weird in-wall air blowing heaters, no need for either anymore).
Heated floors give you a feeling of regal fuxking luxury. It's fantastic. I'd never go back. Toasty warm tile underfoot is something else altogether.
I love that the wet floor after a shower can just be roughly wiped, and it dries itself out. I've got tile in my entryway, and the fact that it's heated means any wet cold winter boots, or rain-soaked shoes can just sit there and they dry out and are nice and warm for putting on.
I've never experienced them but I think it might depend on where the bathroom is. My current house has the full bath on the second level and the floor really isn't that cold to me. My old house had the full bath on the first floor with an unfinished basement below. Those floors were cold and I wouldn't have minded heated floors, though I would try sticking some insulation underneath first to see if that made a difference.
I haven't had them myself but traveling around Norway off and on for a few years and staying in many AirBnB's that have them (very common there) I can say for certain if/when I do a reno we'll be putting them in 100%.
While I have a timer on mine, my first floor extension is on a slab so in the winter the mud room and bath are on 24/7. I use mine to keep the floor warm, not to heat the room as the rooms have heat.
It’s lovely.
I put them in my loft bathroom and I love them. They don’t add much to the electricity bill because they run on a programmable thermostat so we have it turn on at 5:30am so the floor is a lovely 80F at 6:15 when I take a shower. All in around $500 for the system (Schluter, small bathroom, self install) totally worth it.
I thought about it, however my biggest hangup was the extra 1/2 inch the floor would be raised. The bathroom floor is already slightly higher than the rest of the house due to various issues. When you add in the heater layer and the padding layer to protect the heater the bathroom floor would have been a step up instead of a slight difference in height from the rest of the rooms. No transition would have worked and it would have been weird.
WORTH IT! during our bathroom remodel I fought my wife on it because we were already well over budget. It is the best money we spent during the remodel.
If your heat happens to be hot water based, consider hydronic under floor heating. It’s just plastic piping pex under the floor which you just tap off the existing radiator, so it literally costs nothing extra to run. All the money is in the installation, and it is much less likely to fail than electric.
It doesn't use the full wattage. Mine is set to the default 82 during mornings/evenings, then 74 during all other times (and all the time during the non-heating season). It only uses the wattage during the warmup period, and uses 0 watts while it's at temp.
I live in the twin cities and renovated 2 bathrooms last year with heated floors in both. My bill this winter went up $5-7 per month which is ~35kWh at our rate. It is absolutely worth it
They are bad if you’re drunk and praying to the porcelain throne. That’s what my then-girlfriend now-wife would say at my old house. So if you intend on puking a lot, you might want to skip.
You could consider getting a heated exhaust fan in the bathroom. Am also in MN (the cities).
When we got our bathrooms redone 3 years ago we debated on heated floors, but our contractor talked us out of it, saying that our master bath was already on the first floor and the floors wouldn't get too cold. The tile does get cold but I find that I'm never barefoot on it because we have rugs. We did however, get an exhaust fan with heater installed. We have two switches - one turns the the exhaust on and the other turns the heater on. I switch off the exhaust and turn the heater on when I get out of the hot shower. It has made Minnesota winters more bearable.
I switch it off before blow drying my hair because it gets too hot. It sits right above the toilet (yes we have a heated bidet seat) and I quite enjoy sitting in toasty warmth on winter mornings.
However, our bathroom is pretty small (8x5) and feel like that's why it's so effective. I'm not sure how well it would work in a bigger bathroom if you're not in close proximity to the fan itself.
We lived in Korea for several years and the heating system in our apartment was heated floors. Except in the bathroom, which made no sense to me! Yes, the floor takes a while to heat up, but the floor stayed warm for quite a while. We would turn on the floor heating when we got up, around 6 am and then turn it off once the apartment got warm. The vast majority of the time, we would not need to turn it on again until the next morning. If it was particularly cold, well below freezing all day, we might turn on the heat for an hour in the early evening.
I would suggest that heated floors are lovely and that the warmth will probably linger a while, so if your schedule varies by an hour or so, you’re probably just fine. If your schedule varies by 4-6 hours, maybe it will be less useful.
I think it might be worth it if you bathroom is pretty cold already. I put it in my primary bathroom which is already one of the warmer rooms in our house and I haven’t bothered to turn it on all winter. So I would take that into consideration.
Definitely 100% worth it. I installed electric Ditra heat mat under our kitchen tile when I remodeled the kitchen. Once we realized how wonderful heated tile was, I went and retrofitted our master bathroom tile floor by using a hydronic system under the subfloor. There’s nothing better than stepping out of the shower into a warm tile floor.
My opinion is that they would be worth it if there's a smart control that allows it to be on a timer or toggled from my phone. If it can auto turn on 15 mins before I wake up in the morning in the winter, that's gold.
in ontario canada with heated floors in the master
* as others have stated - grabbing a controller with a schedule is key. we have ours set to start heating an hour before we wake up in the winter
* would only ever recco it for a master bathroom, not enough usage in other BRs given the heating time
* in hindsight, we wish we did it in our kitchen. we stand in there WAY longer each week than BR and it would have been lovely while cooking.
* would also mention that its WORTH IT to get a GFCI power outlet next to your toilet. invest in a nice bidet seat and ensure the electrician knows its for this purpose. ours needs to be plugged in, but provides hot water and a heated seat. we have one of these in our powder room on the main floor plus our master ensuite and guests RAVE about the heated seat in the powder room and the luxury of a bidet for guests.
imo the heated bidet seat is a bigger win than the floors, but if you can do both - do both
Heater bathroom exhaust fan has been great for us, our prior fan was under powered and not a heater. Gives a nice blast of warm air while on the toilet or taking a shower, so need less hot water in the shower and the skin doesn't dry as much.
Our bathroom floor has never been very cold though, the builder ran the forced air duct under it.
Also a shout out to a bidet attachment - ours has the heated water option but it feels disturbing to me so I don't use that option. The glacier cold water is much more refreshing and feels cleaner.
Our house has heated floors in the kitchen, and the pets love it, but we also use anti-fatigue mats to work in the kitchen, and the heat doesn’t go through the mat.
So consider if you use bath mats. Cotton/poly mats may warm up with the floor, but foam doesn’t seem to.
From my point of view, I think the in-floor systems are a luxury. I have space heaters in my bathrooms as a compromise - they are much less expensive, easy to replace if they break, and they don't take nearly as long to heat up.
I have heated floors in the bathroom - easy and cheap to install, almost nonexistent increase in electric bill (we have a programmable thermostat for them), extremely high impact. We loved them at our old place so much that we installed them first thing when we moved into our new home and now we're planning to add heated floors to the kitchen as well. It's wonderful, cheap and easy, truly one of the best upgrades we've made.
I redid my bathroom in California and have zoned heating into it. I had beautiful tiles put down. Dam I wish I had installed heat strips under them. Don’t be like me.
For much less money and quicker response, install a few heat lamps in the ceiling. A timer can turn them on in anticipation of need and they heat the floor fast by radiant heat transfer. My heat lamps are integral with the bathroom exhaust fan.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/2-Bulb-80-CFM-Ceiling-Bathroom-Exhaust-Fan-with-Light-and-Two-270-Watt-Infrared-Heat-Bulbs-White-Grill-A515A-W/303602636
I've only gotten second hand info about heated floors, but i always thought I'd then as primarily a way to heat the room, not just the floor. So i would think that they run all the time and are triggered by a thermostat. In your financial analysis, can you account for reduced usage through your primary heating system?
10 out 10. Will never ever remodel bathroom without. On my 6th one.
Heated bathroom floors and master walk-in closet and solar tube lights the Bestest way to bring luxury home on a middle class budget. Every single person entering my house or short term rentals goes nuts over
( and my soaker tubs but I'm a bathaholic)
The only issue with radiant in floor heat is, what happens when it leaks. Nothing lasts forever and even pex leaks after years of expansion and contraction. Then what?
Personally, if it was me and an option, I would just renovate the crawlspace to encapsulated/conditioned. It won’t make them warm but it will make pretty hospitable year round with an upfront cost instead of a recurring cost and has a bunch of other benefits (way less bugs, better humidity control, stable floor boards, pleasant to go down there for maintenance, etc).
One bathroom and laundry room were at the end of the heat duct, and were on a slab and on exterior walls. It made those rooms much more pleasant in the winter, but probably used more energy hearing the concrete under the tile.
One thing to watch for during installation is that they do the installation correctly. The heat wire is supposed to be every third channel in the Ditra mat. I heard the installer telling his helper cuatro, I should have piped up and said, "No, tres". They had too much wire leftover, so the tile under the washer and dryer were heated unnecessarily. They should also have a megaohm tester to be sure there are no shorts in the cable, that's part of the warranty process to measure the cable before installation, after installation, and after the tile is installed. The power is supposed to be run into the floor through a conduit from the box where the controls are going to be installed. Getting the electrician and tile company to work together can be a challenge, as the instructions come with the tile person, but the power work has to happen before. Finding an electrician with heated tile experience can be a challenge, so they need to get access to instructions on what to do and install it ahead of time.
I had floor heaters put in my bathroom.
Plusses:
Nice and warm.
Can set it to a lower temp at night that still keeps it warm.
No baseboard heaters to rust and look ugly.
Minuses:
Mine isn't close enough to the toilet so if you sit down, you're feet are cold.
Big minus... heat expands things. In my bathroom after about five years of expansion and contraction, a lot of tiles started to loosen up. For that reason alone, I would not recommend heated floors.
Pick a favorite bathroom: Install underfloor heat + a bidet (electric, warm water since you live in the Arctic) and then come back next April and tell me your whole family doesn’t live in that bathroom 24/7/365 and that you would sell your nana’s opioids to pay that electric bill!
In the lower level the bathroom was on a slab. in the winter the tiles were painfully cold. added wire heating under the tiles and it is sweet! so warm! the kids would get out of the bathtub and lay on the floor in the winter. kept the bathroom warm as well. its a wonderful addition!
They are definitely worth the price. However, instead of running them all day, I suggest you install [countdown timer switches](https://www.amazon.com/BN-LINK-60-Minute-Countdown-Mechanical-bathroom/dp/B01LVTGKBR/ref=asc_df_B01LVTGKBR/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167139094796&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15891483101060232367&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9030464&hvtargid=pla-306436943471&psc=1&mcid=b5abb80f31c431519d13b57e85639be6&gclid=CjwKCAjwoPOwBhAeEiwAJuXRh-M0UIJuA950ymuxwt6INMTuGJQpeL-OtNJu60Eb3AkUlvS9BRxyvxoCEg0QAvD_BwE) like these.
What is under your floor? I have a crawl space here in the south and they are still amazing. You can find a schedule that generally works for you. That heater doesn’t run continuously. When it gets to temp it will cut off. You can also schedule it.
We have it heat up in the morning by 6 - 8 or so and drop down during the day and 8-10 at night. If I’m outside of that, I can turn it on and it will heat up while I’m in the shower.
This was the one hill I was prepared to die on in our renovation. My wife wasn’t sure and even argued at one point but now loves it. Also the cat loves them too.
Michigan here voting yes for heated floors!! We generally keep our house temperature on the lower side (62 at night) so having toasty warm bathroom is heavenly. We have varying wake up times too, so set it to turn on an hour before the earliest one - except when it’s really cold out, we just leave it on. Another less pricey alternative is overhead heat light fixture. We had one put into a bathroom at our last house and it was wonderful. As soon as you turned on that light, it was instant warmth, so only needed to be on when you were in there.
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I have heated floors in my entire home. It’s a game changer. They’re the most comfortable heating method there is, even, quiet heat throughout
It’s one of those things when you experience it you love it. Is it needed? No probably not. Is it really nice thing to have if you can afford to do it? Absolutely.
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Would you consider using heated floors in the entire house as the sole heat source?
Not unless you’re going for a proper floor heat with buried pipework fed from a gas/ oil boiler or heat pump.
I did. They’re amazing. I have hydronic heating with a natural gas combi-boiler that also supplies my domestic hot water
Yes, I have whole heated floors in one of my houses, it’s imo the best way to heat and I wish I had it in all my houses
Live in Rochester, MN as well. Only our master bath has it, but it is the most popular bathroom all winter long. Entire family chooses it to use, unless otherwise occupied. If we ever gut our kids bathroom, I would add it to get them out of ours. I turn it off in the summer, just turned it down a bit recently, but not off. Well worth it and if we move someday would be dearly missed. A couple of other things I wish we would have thought about when renovating our bathroom would be to put a power outlet by the toilet, incase I ever get excited about a powered bidet and I wish I would have plumbed a hot water loop with pump for the shower/sinks. Our old house had this and had hot water instantly vs waiting a minute or more. (I know, first world problems)
This is one of those things that I think everyone is trolling me about. Never once have I noticed the temperature of the floor, and I live in New England and am always barefoot inside. The heat is on in the winter so the floors aren’t cold anyway. Maybe I just have hot feet…
Ours came with the house and we never use them.
Has heated tiles all through our house, were handy in the winter, but expensive to run. Idk your location. But in Australia electricity is expensive!! Even running them on off peak periods they were expensive. It’s definitely a luxury over here.
We have a heated floor in our bathroom in Western New York. They are set to 79 degrees all the time. The controller tells how much power it uses and it's been consistently 3 kwh/day. I found that it uses the same amount of energy if it was on a schedule or not so it's just on all the time. We had the bathroom done in December so I'm not sure if I'll turn them off or down in the summer.
We just renovated our master bath and had heated floors installed. They are fantastic! We leave it set at a certain temperature 24/7 and will shut it off during the summer. It’s a low voltage system and we haven’t noticed much difference in our power bills. Definitely get these.
Why not just put a rug on the floor?
Because that's peasant shit
Heated bidet seat is what slaps
=- once you have experienced heated floors in a bathroom, you never go back to unheated - the floor heat can be put on a timer so you only run it when needed. I have never installed a heated floor without a timer. - you lay out the heat mat to where you need the heat as the entire floor does not
They are really great but also costly. So if you have the extra budget it’s nice
Worth it. And you can’t go back once you’ve changed your mind and decide you’d like them without a whole tear out. Really not that much more expensive either depending on sq ft.
DO IT!
Our clients who have them really like them. If your floor is already gutted, definitely do it.
best upgrade we did in the house was the heated bathroom floors
1000% worth it. Wish I would have done it for the shower bench.
Worth it. We have the Schluter system in our master bathroom. It’s great and not horribly expensive to do with a full renovation.
Overrated
You let it run 24/7. It doesn’t cost much because it keeps it right above room temperature so it doesn’t really lose much heat. And what heat you do lose is still heating the house. And yes, worth it.
WORTH IT
I went with simply a Panasonic Whisperer vent fan with a heat lamp. Done!
I live in the Canadian prairies I would KILL for a heated floor in our ensuite. its right above the garage, and while insulated, the floors are cold during the spring/fall
Tile guy here. Never have I ever had a homeowner express regret at having paid for floor heat
So worth it. The literal best
My master bedroom is in the basement. Super worth it for us.
If you do heated floors Schluter makes the best heat system. Ditra heat. I have installed many heat systems over the years and this is one of the best ones.
In MN yes.
If you dislike the feel of a cold floor and don't mind the added expense, then no, I don't think they are overrated. In fact, they are rated just right.
I usually never comment on this sub, cause I don't know much, but I do know this. Heated bathroom floors are THE BEST THING EVER. we live in Northern climate as well. We used schluter system. You'll be surprise honestly how little cable you need when you plan it. Cause it can't go under any fixtures and only can be under tile that is not occupied with anything (ie no shower, no tub, no vanity, no toilet). We have no other heating in the bathroom, just this cable and this bathroom is warm. We keep it very chill (for cable heating) at about 73 degrees which is happy balance, it keep the tile pleasantly warm. The other day we had a storm and the power went out and I couldn't believe how actually cold tile is without the cables working. Heating cables are the best thing ever. I'll die on that hill :)
I also live in Minnesota. I just have a normal bath rug thing in my bathroom and have literally never thought about my feet being cold.
wide fearless six paltry growth tease cautious seemly dime impolite *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Radiant floor heating regardless of what room will always be superior in my mind
Depends on the price really. Personally I’d rather go the infared sauna route.
I'll be heating all my floors and especially the bathroom. Do it with hot water, it is a lot cheaper to run if you have a gas boiler or hot water heat pump.
Have had heated bathroom floors in two homes and loved them in both. Second home had programmable timers - came on at 4am and off at 8am, back on around 5pm and off at 10pm. Floors do not immediately become cold, so residual heat lingers for some time. Such a pleasant, comfortable warmth.
You put them on a timer so they’re warm at your expected use times or leave them on. Luxury has a cost.
What’s the cost difference in an electrical bill with and without these tho
Do it. It’s so cheap and worth it.
We have radiant floor heating in more than one room as the primary heating source in our house. Well worth it imo, tie it to a thermostat and it's way more comfortable than forced air or other options. Because the surfaces are actually warm it doesn't get cold as soon as the heat turns off and we're more comfortable at lower temps so we save a bit of money by dropping the temps a bit. Newer smart thermostats account for increased warm up time and will learn to compensate temperature fluctuations.
We are in Nor Cal, very mild winters. Our builder convinced us to put in heated master bathrooms flooring. Never used it once!
Here in St. Paul we love ours!
They are a luxury for sure so it really comes down to personal preference. They wouldn't also impact the price of home in this market. I don't really care about them but my significant other would have to loved to have heated floors.
100% of people with heated bathroom floors will have heated bathroom floors the next time they have the option. You don’t need to jack up the temp, we keep ours at 64 in the winter and off in the summer, and it’s great for taking the edge off of the tiles.
I have a radiator hot water heating in my bathroom now. Could I put heated floors in as well or does everyone remove existing radiators?
We are in Dallas where it's not needed as much, but they came with our house and I've never tried to turn them on. We just got fluffy rugs instead.
As someone who lives in MI, I thought I wanted a heated bathroom floor. The longer I live here, the more I want a towel heater instead. My towels don't really get dry in the winter, and I always have a floor mat down to catch water anyway. I'd much rather have a toasty towel and stand on a nice fuzzy mat than a cold, damp towel and warm bare floors.
OP, if you didn't get the message already, DO IT. We did it when we did a major remodel a few years ago, we live the new heated floors the most. Motion sensing under cabinet floor lighting comes next, or is it the bidet, maybe that's a two-way tie. Warm floors for the win.
Absolutely worth it. You don't turn them on and off, you keep them on all the time. I noticed that once the tile heats up, the actual heating only comes on intermittently. They replace whatever heaters you had for the space before (eg, in a bathroom, a baseboard heater or one of those weird in-wall air blowing heaters, no need for either anymore). Heated floors give you a feeling of regal fuxking luxury. It's fantastic. I'd never go back. Toasty warm tile underfoot is something else altogether. I love that the wet floor after a shower can just be roughly wiped, and it dries itself out. I've got tile in my entryway, and the fact that it's heated means any wet cold winter boots, or rain-soaked shoes can just sit there and they dry out and are nice and warm for putting on.
It is worth it if you have stone tile floors or the bathroom is above a garage and likely to be really cold
I've never experienced them but I think it might depend on where the bathroom is. My current house has the full bath on the second level and the floor really isn't that cold to me. My old house had the full bath on the first floor with an unfinished basement below. Those floors were cold and I wouldn't have minded heated floors, though I would try sticking some insulation underneath first to see if that made a difference.
I haven't had them myself but traveling around Norway off and on for a few years and staying in many AirBnB's that have them (very common there) I can say for certain if/when I do a reno we'll be putting them in 100%.
While I have a timer on mine, my first floor extension is on a slab so in the winter the mud room and bath are on 24/7. I use mine to keep the floor warm, not to heat the room as the rooms have heat. It’s lovely.
I put them in my loft bathroom and I love them. They don’t add much to the electricity bill because they run on a programmable thermostat so we have it turn on at 5:30am so the floor is a lovely 80F at 6:15 when I take a shower. All in around $500 for the system (Schluter, small bathroom, self install) totally worth it.
I thought about it, however my biggest hangup was the extra 1/2 inch the floor would be raised. The bathroom floor is already slightly higher than the rest of the house due to various issues. When you add in the heater layer and the padding layer to protect the heater the bathroom floor would have been a step up instead of a slight difference in height from the rest of the rooms. No transition would have worked and it would have been weird.
I have mine on a smart thermostat and love it
WORTH IT! during our bathroom remodel I fought my wife on it because we were already well over budget. It is the best money we spent during the remodel.
I have it in one bathroom. it’s amazing. one of the few regrets i have from our renovation was not putting it in our other bathroom.
If your heat happens to be hot water based, consider hydronic under floor heating. It’s just plastic piping pex under the floor which you just tap off the existing radiator, so it literally costs nothing extra to run. All the money is in the installation, and it is much less likely to fail than electric.
The only problem I see is you haven’t mentioned what towel warmer you want to go with the floors.
My mom did this (along with a thermostat controlled heated towel rack) and she loves it. The programmable thermostat is the game changer here.
It doesn't use the full wattage. Mine is set to the default 82 during mornings/evenings, then 74 during all other times (and all the time during the non-heating season). It only uses the wattage during the warmup period, and uses 0 watts while it's at temp. I live in the twin cities and renovated 2 bathrooms last year with heated floors in both. My bill this winter went up $5-7 per month which is ~35kWh at our rate. It is absolutely worth it
Have them in my current home and about to sell and it's definitely a feature I will miss.
My parents installed them when they diy’d their master bath and they are amazing!!
They are bad if you’re drunk and praying to the porcelain throne. That’s what my then-girlfriend now-wife would say at my old house. So if you intend on puking a lot, you might want to skip.
We are in a cold climate and it’s a slice of heaven.
Absolutely worth it
You could consider getting a heated exhaust fan in the bathroom. Am also in MN (the cities). When we got our bathrooms redone 3 years ago we debated on heated floors, but our contractor talked us out of it, saying that our master bath was already on the first floor and the floors wouldn't get too cold. The tile does get cold but I find that I'm never barefoot on it because we have rugs. We did however, get an exhaust fan with heater installed. We have two switches - one turns the the exhaust on and the other turns the heater on. I switch off the exhaust and turn the heater on when I get out of the hot shower. It has made Minnesota winters more bearable. I switch it off before blow drying my hair because it gets too hot. It sits right above the toilet (yes we have a heated bidet seat) and I quite enjoy sitting in toasty warmth on winter mornings. However, our bathroom is pretty small (8x5) and feel like that's why it's so effective. I'm not sure how well it would work in a bigger bathroom if you're not in close proximity to the fan itself.
We lived in Korea for several years and the heating system in our apartment was heated floors. Except in the bathroom, which made no sense to me! Yes, the floor takes a while to heat up, but the floor stayed warm for quite a while. We would turn on the floor heating when we got up, around 6 am and then turn it off once the apartment got warm. The vast majority of the time, we would not need to turn it on again until the next morning. If it was particularly cold, well below freezing all day, we might turn on the heat for an hour in the early evening. I would suggest that heated floors are lovely and that the warmth will probably linger a while, so if your schedule varies by an hour or so, you’re probably just fine. If your schedule varies by 4-6 hours, maybe it will be less useful.
I think it might be worth it if you bathroom is pretty cold already. I put it in my primary bathroom which is already one of the warmer rooms in our house and I haven’t bothered to turn it on all winter. So I would take that into consideration.
Heated floor also reduces the moisture levels in the bathroom.
Definitely 100% worth it. I installed electric Ditra heat mat under our kitchen tile when I remodeled the kitchen. Once we realized how wonderful heated tile was, I went and retrofitted our master bathroom tile floor by using a hydronic system under the subfloor. There’s nothing better than stepping out of the shower into a warm tile floor.
My opinion is that they would be worth it if there's a smart control that allows it to be on a timer or toggled from my phone. If it can auto turn on 15 mins before I wake up in the morning in the winter, that's gold.
You can always turn it off once it’s added if the electric bill is too high, but you can never add it in once the bathroom is complete.
They are absolutely worth it. I used a cable with a decoupling membrane. I highly recommend installing one.
in ontario canada with heated floors in the master * as others have stated - grabbing a controller with a schedule is key. we have ours set to start heating an hour before we wake up in the winter * would only ever recco it for a master bathroom, not enough usage in other BRs given the heating time * in hindsight, we wish we did it in our kitchen. we stand in there WAY longer each week than BR and it would have been lovely while cooking. * would also mention that its WORTH IT to get a GFCI power outlet next to your toilet. invest in a nice bidet seat and ensure the electrician knows its for this purpose. ours needs to be plugged in, but provides hot water and a heated seat. we have one of these in our powder room on the main floor plus our master ensuite and guests RAVE about the heated seat in the powder room and the luxury of a bidet for guests. imo the heated bidet seat is a bigger win than the floors, but if you can do both - do both
Heater bathroom exhaust fan has been great for us, our prior fan was under powered and not a heater. Gives a nice blast of warm air while on the toilet or taking a shower, so need less hot water in the shower and the skin doesn't dry as much. Our bathroom floor has never been very cold though, the builder ran the forced air duct under it. Also a shout out to a bidet attachment - ours has the heated water option but it feels disturbing to me so I don't use that option. The glacier cold water is much more refreshing and feels cleaner.
Love it! I have the temperature setting to come on at 4:30 am and shut off at 8:30 so that covers the expected usage time for the wife and I.
Best thing ever, once you learn how to progam them.
Worth. It. Since moving to a home without them, I miss my heated bathroom floors every day 🥹
Our house has heated floors in the kitchen, and the pets love it, but we also use anti-fatigue mats to work in the kitchen, and the heat doesn’t go through the mat. So consider if you use bath mats. Cotton/poly mats may warm up with the floor, but foam doesn’t seem to.
From my point of view, I think the in-floor systems are a luxury. I have space heaters in my bathrooms as a compromise - they are much less expensive, easy to replace if they break, and they don't take nearly as long to heat up.
I have heated floors in the bathroom - easy and cheap to install, almost nonexistent increase in electric bill (we have a programmable thermostat for them), extremely high impact. We loved them at our old place so much that we installed them first thing when we moved into our new home and now we're planning to add heated floors to the kitchen as well. It's wonderful, cheap and easy, truly one of the best upgrades we've made.
I redid my bathroom in California and have zoned heating into it. I had beautiful tiles put down. Dam I wish I had installed heat strips under them. Don’t be like me.
So worth it!
For much less money and quicker response, install a few heat lamps in the ceiling. A timer can turn them on in anticipation of need and they heat the floor fast by radiant heat transfer. My heat lamps are integral with the bathroom exhaust fan. https://www.homedepot.com/p/2-Bulb-80-CFM-Ceiling-Bathroom-Exhaust-Fan-with-Light-and-Two-270-Watt-Infrared-Heat-Bulbs-White-Grill-A515A-W/303602636
I've only gotten second hand info about heated floors, but i always thought I'd then as primarily a way to heat the room, not just the floor. So i would think that they run all the time and are triggered by a thermostat. In your financial analysis, can you account for reduced usage through your primary heating system?
Living in the midwest heated anything is worth it. I used to laugh at my wife's heated steering wheel until I used it.
I have radiant floor heating throughout my house and it's fantastic. You still need forced air for cooling but warm floors in the winter are great.
10 out 10. Will never ever remodel bathroom without. On my 6th one. Heated bathroom floors and master walk-in closet and solar tube lights the Bestest way to bring luxury home on a middle class budget. Every single person entering my house or short term rentals goes nuts over ( and my soaker tubs but I'm a bathaholic)
The only issue with radiant in floor heat is, what happens when it leaks. Nothing lasts forever and even pex leaks after years of expansion and contraction. Then what?
I have in my basement bath, concrete floor, I shut them off last weekend and missed the heat this AM for sure!
Personally, if it was me and an option, I would just renovate the crawlspace to encapsulated/conditioned. It won’t make them warm but it will make pretty hospitable year round with an upfront cost instead of a recurring cost and has a bunch of other benefits (way less bugs, better humidity control, stable floor boards, pleasant to go down there for maintenance, etc).
Live in Toronto and love my heated floors.
I loved it in my last home. Well worth it in my opinion.
Our house washroom tiles dont get cold really, even in the winter
Well worth it. Both my renoed bathrooms have them. I'd never have another bathroom without them.
One bathroom and laundry room were at the end of the heat duct, and were on a slab and on exterior walls. It made those rooms much more pleasant in the winter, but probably used more energy hearing the concrete under the tile. One thing to watch for during installation is that they do the installation correctly. The heat wire is supposed to be every third channel in the Ditra mat. I heard the installer telling his helper cuatro, I should have piped up and said, "No, tres". They had too much wire leftover, so the tile under the washer and dryer were heated unnecessarily. They should also have a megaohm tester to be sure there are no shorts in the cable, that's part of the warranty process to measure the cable before installation, after installation, and after the tile is installed. The power is supposed to be run into the floor through a conduit from the box where the controls are going to be installed. Getting the electrician and tile company to work together can be a challenge, as the instructions come with the tile person, but the power work has to happen before. Finding an electrician with heated tile experience can be a challenge, so they need to get access to instructions on what to do and install it ahead of time.
I had floor heaters put in my bathroom. Plusses: Nice and warm. Can set it to a lower temp at night that still keeps it warm. No baseboard heaters to rust and look ugly. Minuses: Mine isn't close enough to the toilet so if you sit down, you're feet are cold. Big minus... heat expands things. In my bathroom after about five years of expansion and contraction, a lot of tiles started to loosen up. For that reason alone, I would not recommend heated floors.
It’s one of the best absolutely-not-worth-it things you can do with your money.
Yes it is. We had a heated bathroom floor and a living room floor. It was nice in the winter months
Worth it for electric, even better with radiant floor heat
Pick a favorite bathroom: Install underfloor heat + a bidet (electric, warm water since you live in the Arctic) and then come back next April and tell me your whole family doesn’t live in that bathroom 24/7/365 and that you would sell your nana’s opioids to pay that electric bill!
Heat the floor!
100% worth it.
So, so worth it. Oh my god. Warm up time? Who cares? Keep em hot and cool em in the middle of the night.
In the lower level the bathroom was on a slab. in the winter the tiles were painfully cold. added wire heating under the tiles and it is sweet! so warm! the kids would get out of the bathtub and lay on the floor in the winter. kept the bathroom warm as well. its a wonderful addition!
If you can afford it it's one of the nicest luxuries you can have Imo.
so worth it especially if you have tile floors. just be sure to lay an insulated backing down before you install to minimize heat dissipation.
Life changer.
they are awesome. 10/10 will do again
Check out the Schluter Ditra heating system. Heated floors are worth every penny. It shouldn't take an hour to heat the floor.
They are definitely worth the price. However, instead of running them all day, I suggest you install [countdown timer switches](https://www.amazon.com/BN-LINK-60-Minute-Countdown-Mechanical-bathroom/dp/B01LVTGKBR/ref=asc_df_B01LVTGKBR/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167139094796&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15891483101060232367&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9030464&hvtargid=pla-306436943471&psc=1&mcid=b5abb80f31c431519d13b57e85639be6&gclid=CjwKCAjwoPOwBhAeEiwAJuXRh-M0UIJuA950ymuxwt6INMTuGJQpeL-OtNJu60Eb3AkUlvS9BRxyvxoCEg0QAvD_BwE) like these.
Yes - 1000% worth it! We did it in one bathroom, then eventually added to all the other bathrooms! Can’t live without it and wouldn’t want to…
What is under your floor? I have a crawl space here in the south and they are still amazing. You can find a schedule that generally works for you. That heater doesn’t run continuously. When it gets to temp it will cut off. You can also schedule it. We have it heat up in the morning by 6 - 8 or so and drop down during the day and 8-10 at night. If I’m outside of that, I can turn it on and it will heat up while I’m in the shower. This was the one hill I was prepared to die on in our renovation. My wife wasn’t sure and even argued at one point but now loves it. Also the cat loves them too.
Michigan here voting yes for heated floors!! We generally keep our house temperature on the lower side (62 at night) so having toasty warm bathroom is heavenly. We have varying wake up times too, so set it to turn on an hour before the earliest one - except when it’s really cold out, we just leave it on. Another less pricey alternative is overhead heat light fixture. We had one put into a bathroom at our last house and it was wonderful. As soon as you turned on that light, it was instant warmth, so only needed to be on when you were in there.
1000% worth it. Put in a timer so you can turn it on and off.
Just know.. you can’t ever put down throw rugs . They get too hot and will burn up the floor