Heated floors:
Yes or no?
I don’t ever recall thinking our bathroom floor was very cold, but it is slate now.
On a bathroom redo, has anyone had heater floors and not liked them or just been unimpressed?
I’d love to hear any complaints or disappointments before deciding.
Current master bath has heated floors. We get our electricity off the roof, so I no longer complain that the floors add $$ to the electricity bill in the winter. Not sure how much the technology has changed… resistive heating is not very efficient.
My husband likes them. So when we do remodel that bath, the floors will be heated.
My parents had a heated floor in a living room. It had a tiled floor, stone of some kind. I never lived there but was in their house alone one Christmas after they were both taken to the hospital (dementia and cancer.) I have never experienced anything quite so cozy and comforting as that floor on my bare feet. It looked so cold but it felt like summer in December.
That would be a no for us, just one more hard-to-get-to “convenience” that could go wrong and cost $$$. Rugs and slippers are cheaper. But we don’t live anywhere during extremely cold weather, so I’ve never considered the floor temp a problem to be solved. Same reasoning for towel warmers. No need.
We seriously considered a heated floor when we redid our master bathroom, but we decided against it because we worried about having to pull up the ceramic floor planks if something went wrong with the heater.
I’d love radiant heat floors when we remodel our master bath…but I doubt that will make the budget cut. We have a very nice rug we intend to continue to use…and it works just fine.
We also wear slippers in the house.
Our contractor talked us out of them after seeing too many fail.
I had a friend who did a very expensive kitchen redo with heated floors. Shortly after being installed they failed. Most of the new kitchen had to be pulled out and redone. So it would be a big no for me.
We have heated floors in our master bathroom and I love them. The bathroom is at the side of the house that gets really cold in winter (we switch it off when we go away and it’s like walking into an icebox when we get back) - we keep them on low but enough to keep the room comfortable.The cats love it too!
We moved into the house 11 years and my understanding is that the floors were done as part of a renovation 7 years before that, so closing in on 2 decades and still going fine. The controller is dated (beige!) but other than that no complaints. I’m assuming the age means that they are not the most efficient /cost effective heater used but as we’ve always had them don’t know how to strip them out of the electric bill. (Summer has the aircon so no real “control” month to judge…)
My husband ripped out the beige analog controller and replaced it with a new digital one that can be programmed. It was not hard to do according to him. 
Just like replacing your house thermostat.
My bathroom has non-slip porcelain tiles. I can’t recall ever thinking that the floor was especially cold. In addition to the non-slip coating, being an upstairs bathroom, rather than one laid over concrete likely contributes. I sometimes notice the cold temperature when stepping out of shower in winter, but it’s not the tile temperature that’s the problem, it’s the air temperature (and transition from much warmer shower water on skin).
If I did have heated tiles, I expect that I’d almost never turn them on. It’s not worth the time to heat up and potential heating expense for the few seconds of having less cold tiles when walking out of shower. At other times besides walking out of shower during winter months, I’m wearing socks/shoes, so I cold tiles would not be an issue. I may be barefoot in warm summer months, but if it’s warm enough to go barefoot, I wouldn’t want to turn on the heated tiles.
When the lack of personal benefit is combined with higher installation cost + potential mechanical issues that are awkward to repair/replace, it’s an easy no for me.
When I think of radiant heat (floor), it’s the heat source for that room. If we got it, it would replace the current baseboard heat in the room. It’s not like we would switch it on and off. A temp for the room would be set, and the radiant heat would heat the room to that temp.
And if the room temp was set at 72, the floor would still feel colder than your 98.6 feet.
Is this what everyone else here is talking about?
When we rebuilt our house and converted it heated floors in our bathroom went in. I forgot the tile we have but it’s like granite. It’s beautiful but also gets cold in the winter in Chicago. When visiting my son in Sweden they have it in their bathrooms also. It’s such a pleasure
We also have radiant in our basement. We barely turn it on and it keeps it nice and warm. We are going on 33 years in the house and hasn’t failed yet 
These both were put in when we did a complete renovation blow out of the house. Can’t believe we have been here that long. Lol
Don’t know if that’s the term but that’s what we do. Our bathroom is large and cold (floor as well as air temp) in winter without it. We turn the heat up just enough to keep the floor comfortable and that is enough to keep the air temperature good too. I will add it’s the only bathroom (in fact the only room) in the house that has a heated floor - the others are fine without it. Maybe it’s the floor tile in this bathroom (travertine) but also the position in the house.
We just recently redid our master bath (read about it on this thread)
We put heated floors in because it was not too expensive since we were replacing floors anyway. I LOVE it. You can program the thermostat to have them warm when you wake up. Wearing slippers or socks does not compare!
I have a friend who puts her PJs or towel on the floor while she showers so it’s nice and toasty when she is done. The technology has improved a lot - they are installed with 2 wires so if one fails there is a back up. I don’t know anyone who has had an issue with them.
If the floors failed, why would they have to pull the new kitchen apart? I’d just use the kitchen without the heated floor, it should work fine.
The heated wiring only added about $200 to our flooring job.
We have heated floors in the master bath and lower floor laundry and bedroom/tv room in our second home. I love them, especially in winter. (It’s the only heat in the bathroom.)
We’ve had the house since 2016 and they were put in probably 5 years earlier. No problems at all.
There are a variety of different types of heating arrangements. Many people get heated floors primarily to have warm floors, but it can also serve as room specific heating as opposed to whole home forced air from furnace, in a similar way to baseboard heating, like you describe. Some arrangements have 2 thermostats with separate temperatures – one for multi-room forced air and one for room-specific floor heating. It’s my understanding that it’s more common to have a single thermostat with dual sensors in newer installs, which can support them working together, such as floor consistently turns on before air.
My home doesn’t have baseboard room heating. I also keep thermostat in off position as default, and choose when to turn on. There is no point to keep the upstairs thermostat always heating to 72F, when nobody is upstairs during the all but a few hours of the day (not including sleeping). So in my case, I expect it would be turning on/off for a few minutes when stepping in bathroom, generally for showers.
Except…really…radiant heat doesn’t work well that way. It works best when set and left alone.