Which underfloor heating is right for your home?

Thin foil-faced insulation boards with channels the pipe drops into. You lay your floor straight on top — no screed, no waiting. The lightest-touch way to add underfloor heating to an existing room.

Same overlay idea, but the top is a mesh surface made to grip tile adhesive directly. If you've set your heart on a tiled or stone floor without pouring screed, this is the board for the job.

A tougher board with a waterproof, cement-coated top. It takes tiles bonded directly and happily accepts wood, laminate, vinyl and even carpet. Because it's waterproof, it's a smart pick for bathrooms and kitchens.

The classic. Pipe is clipped to insulation, leak-tested, then screed is poured over the top. Once it's cured, that screed becomes a big warm slab — the highest-output system of the lot, and (like every system here) it works with a heat pump.

Interlocking panels covered in little bumps that grip the pipe at perfect spacing and protect it before the screed goes down. Pipe goes in fast, you can route it any direction for awkward rooms, and you can often use a shallower screed.

For suspended timber floors. Pipe sits on insulation between the joists and is packed with a dry sand-and-cement mix that stores and spreads heat — getting surprisingly close to a screeded floor's performance.

Thin aluminium plates fixed across the joist tops, with pipe clicking into grooves. No screed, no drying, and the plates are so thin they add no real floor height. Your floor goes straight on top.

The clever one. If you can reach the joists from below — a cellar, a crawl space, or an open/exposed ceiling in the room beneath — plates are fixed to the underside and pipe is run through the joists. The floor above is never lifted and no height is added, so it can work upstairs too, as long as the ceiling below is accessible.