How can I insulate walls from indoors?

Sandy Wyckoff
by Sandy Wyckoff

I live in a trailer and am looking for ways to cut my heating costs. Someone suggested that I insulate from inside. Other than hanging quilts, as they used to do, I don’t have a clue. Any ideas?

  5 answers
  • Lifestyles Homes Lifestyles Homes on Oct 02, 2019

    If they meant literally inside your home, not inside the walls, from the inside:

    The problem with adhering sheet foam insulation to your inside walls is two fold.


    1.) humidity will get in between the foam & your interior walls and cause mold.


    2.) the thinnest you can buy is 1/2” thick and it’s only a R-5. Depending on where you live, a higher R-rating is needed.

    Having 1”+ of foam inside, cut around windows, outlets and doors is going to look odd, even after you tape & paint it.


    It’s Fall already, so can you cut open and demo the walls from the inside and insulate them and then put up new drywall? If so, then spray foam around the outlets and any other perforations too.


  • Mad29883817 Mad29883817 on Oct 02, 2019

    Can spray\ blow insulation between walls

  • Twyla J Boyer Twyla J Boyer on Oct 02, 2019

    It depends a little on what your walls are made of. Older trailers often had paneling walls. Paneling can be carefully pried off, insulation could be added, and then the paneling could be replaced. But that is a lot of work. Newer style trailers are even harder to do because they often have wallboard, which tends to break up when removed.


    If you are wanting to insulate without taking walls apart and don't necessarily want to look at quilts on all the walls, try using tall bookcases and other tall furniture with a back. You can tack even ugly old thrift store blankets onto the back of tall furniture to provide some insulation that you don't have to see. This will not work if you have baseboard heat, though, as it would block the baseboard heat from coming into the room.


    Shrink plastic over the windows will help a lot, as will filling any cracks along windows, at corners, along doorways, and getting outlet and light switch insulation. (Outlet and light switch insulation looks kind of like foamie sheets kids use for crafts, but is cut to fit behind the outlet plate or switch plate without interfering with the thing working) You can use either paintable caulk, rope caulk (which is removable), or weather strips, depending on what area you are addressing. If it helps at all, my Mom used to have lightweight frames with shrink plastic that she put over the windows in the winter - worked like shrink plastic, but looked neater.


    Hanging quilts or blankets is certainly an inexpensive solution, but not to everyone's taste. Insulated curtains are another option. Large tapestries (like 1960s college dorms) are an option, too. If you insulate by hanging something on the walls, you could use cup hooks along the ceiling so that you can remove it in the spring and wash it and hang it back up next fall. Safety pins along the edge would make for pretty easy hanging. The key is to hang whatever it might be close to the wall to make a sort of trap for air. Trapped air, in one fashion or another, is basically how most insulation works.

  • Sandy Wyckoff Sandy Wyckoff on Oct 02, 2019

    Thanks. Food for thought.

  • Leah Leah on Oct 06, 2019

    Insulate bottom of trailer. Make sure you have a "wall" of some sort to cover open space under trailer. Stick insulation in plug ins. Take off plate and put fiber glass insulation there, were gloves. . Use an infared heater in room you spend most of your time if you have baseboard heaters. Plastic for windows. They make a stick on roll to use on doors if leaking air. If leaking under doors have something laid there to block air. Spray in insulating foam for holes. Expands fast, use a little at time. Hope any of this helps.