How to Insulate Walls without Removing Plaster

Wall insulation is a valuable improvement for any building, helping you keep heat inside, maintain a comfortable temperature and potentially reduce your energy bills. But with conventional insulation methods requiring you to remove plaster from your walls, the job as a whole soon becomes messy, costly and overwhelming.

Thankfully, there is an easier way – installing insulation over plaster walls. Read on as we discuss how to insulate walls without removing plaster.

Removing plaster for wall insulation

If you want to insulate your walls from the inside, conventional solutions generally come in the form of insulation boards such as laminated plasterboard or insulated polystyrene panels.

The main problem with these boards is that they’re quite thick. A full layer of existing plaster plus the size of the insulation boards and a final over-skim can eat away quite significantly at the size of a room.

As a result, plaster usually needs to be removed before installing insulation boards directly to your walls. Doing so makes the job more time-consuming, disruptive and costly.

Insulation over plaster walls

If you want to install insulation over plaster walls, the cheapest way of doing so is probably thermal liner. Available in rolls, it is simply applied to walls with adhesive, much like normal lining paper or wallpaper.

Unfortunately, the effects of doing so are pretty negligible. While it doesn’t require plaster to be removed, it won’t have a huge impact on the thermal efficiency of your walls. The result is still a decent amount of investment and work with very little reward.

However, there is another option – using SprayCork as insulation over plaster walls.

How to insulate walls effectively without removing plaster

SprayCork is a natural cork render which can be applied internally as a thin layer on top of your existing plaster, as long as the plaster itself isn’t cracking or coming away from the wall. The SprayCork itself is sprayed on as two thin, 3mm layers.

The cork render coat is then finished with a 2mm skim of plaster, allowing you to paint or add wallpaper to decorate your walls. With a final depth of just 8mm, it’s much thinner than insulation boards where plaster needs to be removed to compensate for their depth.

But most importantly, it’s more effective than thermal liner – and insulation boards. Despite being applied in such a thin layer, SprayCork has the natural insulative qualities of cork, which provides impressive thermal performance. On top of that, it’s also noise reducing, breathable and moisture-resistant – minimising the chance of damp and mould developing.

Put SprayCork to the test

Walls are an important part of your home’s thermal envelope. With SprayCork, you can insulate internal walls without removing plaster to achieve better heat retention, reduce your energy bills and eliminate damp.

Best of all, we have a network of approved applicators who are fully trained in the application of SprayCork as insulation over plaster walls. Find your nearest approved applicator today or contact our team for more information.