Where should I place my Infrared Heating Panels?

Our Infrared Heating panels are both efficient and stylish. They provide fantastic warmth that remains comfortable, maintenance free and controllable throughout the home. Importantly though, since they don’t rely on convection like more traditional radiators and storage heaters, positioning the infrared heating panels is key.

Below we take you through the various places you can install the infrared panels to ensure that you get the most out of them.

Placing Infrared Heating Panels on your Walls

Most people will look to situate their infrared heaters on the walls.

If you are installing your infrared panels on the walls, you should ensure that panels larger than 400W are mounted at least 1.5m from the floor and smaller panels at least 1.2m from the floor. This ensures that the infrared emitted from the panels is spread evenly and far without interruption, increasing efficiency. Remember that infrared does suffer from shading, therefore hanging the heating panels higher on the wall normally ensures the infrared can travel unimpeded to the intended destination.

The Aspect and Summit range of Infrared Heaters that we sell are designed for indoor and conservatory usage – the ideal height to install them is 2.3m to 2.5m off the ground. The Summit can also be placed on the ceiling pointing downwards.

Our entire range of Herschel infrared heating panels can be hung on the walls using the brackets provided.

Placing Infrared Heating Panels on your Ceiling

The ideal place to locate your infrared heaters is on the ceiling. There are 3 main reasons why this is the case. First of all, when mounted on the ceiling obstructing the infrared is not an issue since no furniture will block the spread of the infrared from the panel. This gives the room an even spread of heat and minimises hot and cold areas.

Secondly, when located on the ceiling the full potential of the infrared distribution is ensured. Meaning that fewer panels are required, allowing you to save money by reducing the number of panels you need to buy (and therefore the running costs since you are lowering the wattage required to heat the same space).

Finally, placing the panel on the ceiling means that space is not taken up on the walls. The panels also get as hot as radiators; so having them on the ceiling makes sure that they aren’t touched.

For the Pulsar Infrared heaters, they are ideal for ceilings of around 3m. However, as they can be hung with various lengths of cable from the ceiling just ensure that they are above 2.8 metres off the ground.

Unfortunately, only White infrared panels, Summit and Pulsar can be attached to the ceiling – this is due to the weight of the glass heaters – the load that the glass panels would put on the ceiling would just be too much.

Having your Infrared Heating Panels as Stand alone heaters

If you are looking for the infrared panel to be used as a plug in portable heater, you have the option of buying feet for the Select and Inspire White ranges. These mean that the Infrared Heating Panel can still be used safely without mounting them on the walls or installing them onto the ceiling.

Panel feet are perfect when the ceilings are above 3m high, or the area required to be heated is further than 3 metres away from the walls. The Select feet can only be used with the Select carbon fibre panels, however the Inspire feet can be used across the entire Inspire range of panel.

Additional points

Infrared is effective up to 3m and is emitted at an angle of around 45 degrees.

The Panels come with a bracket and screws, which enables easy installation onto the ceiling and walls.

If in doubt we would always recommend to oversize the panel (in terms of wattage per m2) – we would much prefer you to be too warm with the ability to turn off the panel rather than too cold! You can find more about sizing the infrared heating panels by clicking here

Posted on 22 Comments

22 thoughts on “Where should I place my Infrared Heating Panels?

  1. Im thinking of placing a infrared heating panel (with picture printed on) on my chimney breast facing the sofa & back wall but the wall is 3.3 meters away from where the panel would be installed. Would i still get any benefit? or is that too far? does a 1000w travel further than a 600w panel. thanks.

    1. Thanks for your question. For feeling the radiant effect on your skin, the panel would need to be no more than 2.5 metres away. However at 3.3m the panel would still be warming the room, so long as correctly specified for the space and properly controlled. The 1000w and 600w panels both have the same level of transmissiveness (both operate at the same temperature), so one doesn’t travel further than the other, it just heats a bigger space. I hope that helps.

  2. I have an open plan living room in a standard three bed semi-detached and the draught comes down the stairs and the heat goes up the stairs. If I placed a panel say half way down the stairs on a sloped ceiling would this act as a warm air curtain stopping hot air rising up the stairs.

    1. Unfortunately the panel itself will not prevent air movement (draughts etc) of any sort around the house. If you placed a panel on the sloped ceiling on the stairs, it would, however warm up that area of the stair well.

  3. Is it okay to place panel above the television screen

    1. It should be fine to place an IR panel above a TV screen as long as the minimum distances in the instructions are respected.

  4. If we place an infrared panel on the ceiling (approx 2.5m high )will it heat the marble floor below ?

  5. Do the select infrared heating panels, which i think are made from carbon fibre need to be mounted on the joists or will the plaster board itself support the weight of them?

  6. Where do I place infrared heaters in my conservatory? I assume pointing them at the glass is stupid, but it seems the logical place to put them, where the wall of the house meets the glass roof of the conservatory. Should I just point them down at the floor?

  7. We had infrared heater installed just over a year ago and have found that the walls above the heaters have got really dirty ;is this normal ?

  8. I would love to hide the heaters. Are there any which are disguised as coving? I would like to use Infrared and am looking at moving away from a gas boiler to reclaim wall space and aesthetics, But I cannot quite visualise them looking good on the ceiling.

  9. Hi I was wondering whether you could help me, we have a large kitchen in our old farmhouse. I don’t think there is any insulation to be honest. We have a large kitchen table as our centre piece in the room but I was considering putting the infrared on the ceiling, however my worry is that the infrared won’t reach underneath the table and everyones legs and feet will be cold? Would we be better off putting the infrared panels on the wall? Or should it be okay? Sorry – new to this and want to make sure we get it right!

  10. I have a query; I currently have a house that runs via mains gas. The boiler works very well and currently manages to heat the 3 bedrooms, kitchen and living room pretty comfortably. We are toying with the idea of building an extension. The question I am wondering is whether or not to run the additional pipework into the new extension, then linked to that, will the existing boiler be able to cope with the new larger footprint to heat? If not, I am considering installing an electric shower in the bathroom in the new extension, but in terms of heating I am considering electric heating. As such I came across infrared heating as a means of heating this new extension. In terms of costs, I imagine swapping the boiler (if it is sufficient) and running lots of new pipework into the extension will be fairly expensive, I think Infrared will definitely win there. I have been told (and it looks to be true having briefly looked at my energy bill) that electricity is far more expensive than gas and therefore this is the reason everyone here in England uses gas to heat their homes.

    So running costs of the boiler would be cheaper than the infrared. I guess then maintenance of the radiators and so forth is higher than for an equivalent electric heating source. Basically I don’t know what to do. Any help would be really appreciated!

  11. Hi, I am considering installing infrared heaters in my cafe, but I don’t want to get the infrared panels, instead I want to get the ones that look more like traditional bar heaters. My question is regarding where to place these particular infrared heaters, can I install them at the top of the wall at the angle between the ceiling and the wall? I want them as high as possible (ceiling is 3.2m) so they are out of reach of little children! Will they still be effective at this height?

    1. Hi Henry, that is absolutely fine to install those particular heaters there – they will still work extremely well at that height.

  12. I am interested in hanging infrared from my cieling to free up room. Does anyone know the maximum weight that plasterboard will hold? Obviously I will aim for the joists but what if they don’t correspond to the mounting layout on the back only the panel. Don’t want to bring the roof down just to get some new heaters!

    1. Hi Ali, unfortunately I can find this anywhere, but we get a large number of people hanging the select infrared panels from Herschel, they are pretty light considering the size of the larger ones and we haven’t heard of any issues.

  13. I had a quote for Fisher heaters, it was over £6,000 for 5 heaters and installation. I could not believe it! I was then looking for another alternative to my old storage heaters and came across infrared heating. It is absolutely perfect for what I need and was exactly what I was looking for. All in it cost us just shy of £1,800 with heating controls included. I wouldn’t look too much beyond them!

  14. I decided to buy infrared heaters to replace the big old storage heaters in my home. I actually prefer the heat they produce, but I would certainly do your research as it is definitely different to the heat produced by the storage heaters. The biggest pro for us is the fact the infrared heaters take up so little space in my home. Prompt delivery to

    1. Thanks Kevin, we are getting more and more customers replacing their storage heaters with our infrared heaters, I am glad they are working for you!

  15. I can’t imagine putting heaters on the roof? Surely with heat rising, this sort of defeats the object. I get that it means they are out the way, but surely their effectiveness is hugely diminished?

    I am looking to get a new heating system and infrared heaters do seem like something I need to consider, but I think I would have to put them on the wall. Is there a worry about heat coming out of the back of the panels or are they directional?

    Also are they heavy? I think it is just plasterboard, if I were to get plasterboard rawlplugs would they take the weight of the panels. Last thing I want is the heaters coming off the wall, and if they are anything like my storage heaters they will weigh a bloody tonne!

    1. Hi Abagail,
      Thanks for your comment! So taking your points in order.

      Firstly, the infrared travels unimpeded from the panel until it hits a solid object, so positioning the infrared heaters on the roof is actually perfect because you reduce the impact of shading (i.e. furniture stoping the spread on the infrared heat). The heaters themselves are directional, although some heat will come out of the back of the panel. They are manufactured though with insulated backings to minimise the heat escaping out of the back of the infrared heating panel.

      In terms of weight it varies completely from panel to panel and obviously smaller panels are going to weigh considerably less than big panels. The Herschel Select infrared heating panels are extremely lightweight so are perfect for the ceiling. Likewise the Könighaus ones should be fine too. Ideally though try and find the joists, so the plasterboard isn’t taking all the weight of the panels.

      Finally, the infrared heaters are certainly lighter that the storage heaters, so have no fear there 🙂

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