Energy price cap rises in January: 9 heating settings that cut the bill (most are free)

Turn the thermostat down 1°C and you cut roughly 10% off the heating part of your bill, for nothing. Forecasts say the January 2027 energy price cap will rise 16 to 27% when Ofgem announces it on 25 November 2026. The cap limits unit rates, not your bill, so using less heat is the only lever you control.

What the January cap changes, and what it does not

Ofgem sets the cap every three months. The current one, for October to December 2026, is £1,723 a year for a typical household. The next, for January to March 2027, is announced on 25 November 2026; at the time of writing forecasts range from about £1,999 (Cornwall Insight) to £2,181 (an average of supplier predictions), a rise of 16 to 27%.

The cap does not cap your bill. It caps the price per unit of gas and electricity and the daily standing charge; use twice the gas and you pay twice the money. The only lever you control is how many units you use, and in a gas-heated house most go on heating, so the settings below are about heat, not switching supplier.

The nine settings, ranked by what they save

Setting	Cost	Typical saving	Effort
1. Thermostat down 1°C	Free	About 10% of heating cost; the biggest lever	One minute
2. Heat on a schedule	Free	Large if the house is empty all day	Ten minutes
3. Combi flow temperature to about 60°C	Free	Around 9% (Money Saving Boiler Challenge)	Two minutes
4. Radiator valves set per room	Free; smart valves £650 to £900 fitted	Grows with every room you stop heating fully	Five minutes; half a day for smart valves
5. Smart thermostat with geofencing	£180 to £320 fitted	Nothing alone; keeps 1, 2 and 4 running	An hour
6. Hot water timer, cylinder at 60°C	Free	Small; 60°C is the safe minimum	Five minutes
7. Bleed radiators, move furniture	Free	Small; rooms heat faster	Half an hour
8. Letterbox, loft hatch, chimney balloon	£5 to £30 each	Small per item; pays back this winter	An hour
9. Time-of-use tariff and smart meter	Free to switch	Large with a heat pump, EV or battery; near zero without	An afternoon

Settings 1 to 3: free, and most of the saving

1. Turn the thermostat down 1°C. Most homes are comfortable at 19 or 20°C. Each degree lower cuts roughly 10% of heating cost. Public health advice is 18°C or above in living rooms; do not go below that for anyone older or unwell. Drop one degree, live with it for a week, then decide.

2. Heat on a schedule, not constantly. Warm from 06:30 to 08:30 and 17:00 to 22:30 uses far less gas than warm all day. Leaving it on low is not cheaper with a gas boiler; you pay to replace heat nobody was there to feel.

3. Turn the boiler flow temperature down to about 60°C. A combi leaves the factory sending 70 or 80°C water to the radiators. Condensing boilers, meaning every gas boiler fitted since 2005, recover more heat from their exhaust when the returning water is cool, so a 60°C flow runs the same boiler more efficiently. The Money Saving Boiler Challenge put the saving at around 9%. If a room never gets warm enough, go up in 5°C steps. On a combi this is a separate dial from the hot water.

Settings 4 and 5: heat only the rooms you use

4. Set the radiator valves room by room. The hall thermostat decides when the boiler runs; the valve on each radiator decides how much heat that room takes. Bedrooms at 2 or 3, the spare room at 1, the lounge at 4, and the heat goes where you sit. Smart radiator valves do the same on a schedule, so the bedroom warms at 21:30 and drops at 07:00 without anyone remembering. A Tado X set for a three-bed is about £650 to £900 fitted at the time of writing, the one item worth watching in our Black Friday smart home guide.

5. A smart thermostat that knows when you are out. Geofencing turns the heating down when the last phone leaves and back up when the first heads home. Fitted, it is £180 to £320; our smart thermostat installation cost guide breaks that down by brand.

Does the smart kit pay for itself?

Not on its own, and we would rather say so than sell you a box. A smart thermostat set to 22°C all day saves nothing. The kit makes settings 1, 2 and 4 effortless, so they still happen in February. Whether that pays depends on how long your house sits empty, the question is a smart thermostat worth it answers.

Settings 6 to 9: hot water, radiators, draughts and the tariff

6. Hot water on a timer, cylinder at 60°C. With a cylinder, heat it for an hour twice a day rather than all day, and set its thermostat to 60°C: hot enough to kill Legionella, no hotter. Combi owners can skip this one.

7. Bleed the radiators and move the sofa. A radiator cold at the top has air in it and heats half a room; a bleed key costs a pound or two. A sofa or curtain in front of one takes the heat before the room does.

8. Stop the draughts that cost pounds to fix. A letterbox brush, a loft hatch seal and a chimney balloon for an unused fireplace are £5 to £30 each at the time of writing and pay back this winter.

9. Pick the right tariff. With a heat pump, an electric car or a home battery, a time-of-use tariff and a smart meter can halve the price of the units you shift overnight. For a gas-heated house with none of those it does little. Our smart home energy guide covers batteries, solar and load shifting.

One heating zone in a West Sussex semi

Most houses we work in around Horsham, Crawley, Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill are 1930s semis or brick-and-flint cottages with one heating zone: one hall thermostat, one timer, every radiator on together. Setting 4 is where the money is there: a four-bed semi with a study and a spare room heats two rooms nobody sits in for 12 hours a day.

Smart radiator valves turn that one zone into six or eight with no plumbing. Setting up the valves, the thermostat and the schedule as one system, with a goodnight button that turns the house down, is our smart home installation service; smart home installation in Horsham shows what a visit looks like.