#8 Plaster your walls for warmth

A well insulated home is a comfortable home to live in. Warmer in winter, cooler in summer and cheaper to heat. Decent insulation may be easy in new builds, but many of us live in older buildings where improvements are not so simple.

The UK's extensive stock of beautiful old Victorian housing may be particularly challenging—often built single-skin brick walls with little or no natural insulation.

There are ways to retain the beauty and the warmth at the same time. Insulating plaster is becoming increasingly common. These replace normal plaster to provide an insulating layer inside the wall. Often made with sustainable materials like cork, insulating plaster can be a low carbon, low impact way of significantly improving an older home.

It's not just good for warmth. It helps us retain the beauty and heritage of our older and historic buildings while solving some of their problems. If you're looking for ways to reduce your heating costs in an older house, it's an option well worth exploring.

It's not just about the short term. Lower heating costs are also lower carbon costs, and help us shift faster away from fossil fuels.

There's more out there than plaster. Cork-based renders, boards and other products are all ways of dealing with tricky insulation problems in older houses. There's a lot to explore.

It's a long journey

The more we act, the more we share, the more we have a movement towards a healthier, safer, more prosperous future for us all.

— 200 ways