Why does it feel colder inside in the winter even though the thermostat says the temperature is the same?
In: Biology
Probably because it is. The thermostat only says what temperature it is at the thermostat, not for the entire room. In the summer it’s probably warmer closer to the walls/windows and in the winter it’s probably colder.
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The reason is that the walls of your house are colder in winter than they are in the summer. They are cooler than the room (air) temperature because the walls are touching the cold outside. Your body is constantly emitting infra-red radiation (heat) to the things around you and they are doing the same to you. In winter the walls do not emit as much radiation but you lose the same or more so you feel colder.
Humidity plays a big part in temp perception. In the winter, outside colder air cannot hold the same amount of humidity as hotter summer air, so typically your house, while the same temp, has less humidity. Even if you have a humidifier, it’s tough to match the potentional summer air humidity. That difference eventually makes it into your house.
The lower the humidity, the more moisture evaporates on your skin, making you feel cooler despite the temp at the thermostat saying the same.
Heating and air contractor here. I always wished instead of thermostats we used a version of a humidistat especially for air conditioning. People get it in their head that they’re only comfortable at 72 degrees. You’re really comfortable at a certain level of humidity. That’s why a 85 degree day with low humidity feels better than a 78 degree day with high humidity.
SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE MISSED A KEY PART OF THE ANSWER.
Even the current top answer has missed the answer. It’s not all attributed to humidity. Far from it. Humidity can be controlled but you will still feel colder.
The other key ingredient is radiation.
In cold weather, the walls and windows of the room will be colder, and so you will experience more radiative heat loss, even though the air is at the same temperature.
Radiation heat exchange!
The walls and windows around you are much colder in the winter and pull the energy off of you. Or in summer, if the walls and windows are hot they push heat onto you.
Think of standing in front of a bonfire in the winter and then someone walks between you and the fire. You are instantly colder. But air temp around you doesn’t change.
At all times you are exchanging heat with your surroundings despite the air temp around you.
ELI5 Answer:
The thermostat only tells you the temperature where the thermostat is measuring it. It very likely IS colder in the winter even when the thermostat says the same number. Most thermostats are on inner walls, and the cold is coming from the outer walls and windows. So, the thermostat thinks it’s warmer than it really is.
Your body doesn’t know what “cold” is, only that there’s a gradient that exists between your skin and the air, and heat is moving away from you.
Even though you’re in a somewhat insulated environment, there’s still a mass movement of heat from the environment inside to outside, and you’re aware that the gradient is “stronger” than normal, more heat is leaving the environment than when it was hot outside.
A fundamental paradigm of psychophysics is the notion, that human senses are way better in determining changes in relative terms rather than absolute. So it’s more or less the difference in percentage/proportion that is important in your perception of warm and cold, rather than the absolute value. It’s called the [Weber-Fechner law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law).
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