Good home wall insulation is key to saving money on heating and cooling, as well as maintaining a consistent temperature in your home. If you’re building a new home, choosing the proper home insulation now will save you money over time. However, if you own an older home, improving wall insulation is relatively easy, and will reduce your energy costs.

Home wall insulation comes in a variety of types. When planning on improving wall insulation, choose your materials based on a number of factors, including the insulation’s R-value (or how efficiently it insulates) and ease of installation.

Home Wall Insulation Basics

Properly installed home wall insulation is key to regulating your home’s temperature. You can use several different types of materials when improving wall insulation, including:

• Blown-in wall insulation
• Rigid fiberglass
• Rolled fiberglass.

In order to install home wall insulation correctly, make sure that all possible crevices are sealed and well-insulated. During new home construction, you can use rigid fiberglass or rolled fiberglass to fill in the spaces between studs as each wall is constructed. You can also choose to use structural insulated panels (SIP) in your new home. These prefabricated panels are put together to make a house, and generally insulate very efficiently.

No matter which option you choose, you will want to make sure that your new home is well-insulated from the start, because installing insulation post-construction is more difficult and costly due to the logistics of filling the interior spaces of the walls.

Cavity Wall Insulation

Cavity wall insulation is a type of “blown in” wall insulation that is quite efficient. Cavity wall insulation is composed of a material, such as foam, fiberglass pellets or cellulose, that is sprayed or blown into the cavities of existing walls using a blower system. This approach is ideal for improving wall insulation in older homes.

Cavity wall insulation thoroughly fills all crevices, making it an extremely efficient home wall insulation material. However, the installation is more difficult, and the investment for labor is a bit more costly. When improving wall insulation in existing homes, you’ll also have to drill small holes in the walls to blow in the cavity wall insulation.

Other Types of Home Wall Insulation

Rigid wall insulation is often used in conjunction with other types of in-wall insulation, as it can help insulate areas that cavity wall insulation and rolled-in fiberglass insulation can’t. This type of home wall insulation is often used on the outside of framing and block walls to keep the interior of the studs dry and warm.

Other types of wall insulation include:

• Concrete block insulation
• Insulated concrete forms
• Reflective insulation systems.

Concrete forms and concrete block insulation must be installed when a home is built. However, the typical homeowner should be able to install simple reflective insulation systems when improving wall insulation.