Why Southern Europe Is Colder Inside Than Minnesota

Minnesota is brutally cold outside, and most homes treat that as a design emergency. Southern Europe is milder outside, and a shocking number of homes treat winter like a minor inconvenience. Americans move for the weather, then spend January wearing a coat indoors.

An American couple we know spent years fantasizing about “Mediterranean winters.”

They landed in Spain, rented a sunny apartment, and by week two they were sitting on the sofa with a blanket, slippers, and a hot drink, still shivering.

Outside, it was 12°C.

Inside, it felt like a tiled refrigerator.

This is the part Americans don’t understand until they live it: outdoor climate does not predict indoor comfort. Building standards, heating systems, energy prices, and cultural norms do. Minnesota’s cold forces homes to perform. Southern Europe often doesn’t demand the same performance from its housing stock, especially older rentals.

If you want the blunt version: Minnesota is engineered for winter. A lot of Southern Europe is engineered for summer, and winter is something you manage with layers.

The outdoor temperature comparison is a trap

Americans compare maps. They look at average winter temps and assume the warmer place will feel warmer.

That logic fails the moment you walk indoors.

In Minnesota, winter cold is not optional. A home that cannot hold heat is dangerous. So the baseline expectation is that indoor life stays stable, even when it’s below freezing for weeks.

In Southern Europe, winter is often short, inconsistent, and dry in some areas, damp in others. Many people heat less, heat smaller zones, and tolerate indoor temperatures Americans would consider unacceptable. In older buildings, the structure itself may leak warmth through windows, walls, and floors.

Public health guidance gives a useful anchor. The World Health Organization cites 18°C as a proposed safe and well-balanced indoor temperature for general populations during cold seasons. Many American households aim higher than that for comfort, and U.S. energy guidance commonly frames winter thermostat settings around 68°F to 70°F (20°C to 21°C) while awake.

Now picture the reality in many Southern European rentals: you can have a mild day outside and still sit in a living room that hovers near that 18°C threshold, or below it, because the building and the heating routine never push it higher.

That’s why Americans say, “I was warmer in Minnesota.”

They’re not talking about the street. They’re talking about the couch.

Southern Europe has a documented winter warmth problem, even with milder weather

This isn’t just expat complaining. European data shows the pattern clearly.

Eurostat reported that in 2023 the highest shares of people unable to keep their home adequately warm were in Spain and Portugal, both at 20.8%. In the same year, countries like Luxembourg and Finland reported very low rates.

That single comparison is the whole point. Finland is colder than Spain, yet far fewer people report being unable to keep warm at home. The problem is not the latitude. It’s the housing and energy reality.

Eurostat also tracks a related measure: people reporting their dwelling was not comfortably warm during winter. In 2023, this was 27.3% in Spain and 38.0% in Portugal, among the highest shares in the EU.

So yes, Americans can feel colder indoors in Southern Europe than in Minnesota, because a meaningful portion of the population is literally telling surveys they cannot keep homes comfortably warm.

When a place has a high rate of “not comfortably warm,” the expat experience makes more sense. You are not uniquely sensitive. You moved into a system where winter warmth is unevenly delivered and often expensive to achieve.

Minnesota homes are forced to hold heat, Southern Europe homes often are not

Minnesota’s climate forces a certain kind of building discipline. Heat loss is not a mild annoyance. It’s a survival problem.

That’s why energy codes and construction practices in cold climates focus heavily on insulation, air sealing, and predictable heating performance. Minnesota’s energy code system is explicitly structured around minimum R-values and maximum U-factors for building components, with a long history of updates and alignment with model codes.

Southern Europe has modern energy codes too, and new builds can be excellent. The issue is that much of the housing stock Americans rent is older.

Spain’s residential stock is notably aged. Multiple analyses and datasets show a large share of buildings built before modern energy efficiency standards were common. One EU research project summary notes 56.3% of Spain’s buildings were built prior to 1980, and an academic analysis using Spanish energy performance certificate data found 58.3% of buildings or building units in that sample were built prior to 1980.

Older buildings are not automatically bad. Some are solid. Some have thick walls that help in certain climates. But many older Southern European buildings were not built with the assumption of constant winter heating. Drafty windows, uninsulated walls, cold tile floors, and weak thermal bridges become normal.

Then Americans arrive with an indoor expectation shaped by colder-climate housing: stable warmth, minimal drafts, and floors that don’t steal heat from your feet.

That mismatch shows up immediately as radiant cold, the sensation that the air might be tolerable but the surfaces around you are cold enough to make you feel chilled anyway.

The heating system difference is everything, and renters inherit it

Americans often assume “heating is heating.”

In practice, Southern European rentals commonly rely on room-by-room solutions, not whole-home systems. You might get a split-unit heat pump in the living room, a portable heater for bedrooms, or an old radiator system that was never designed for uniform comfort.

Minnesota homes, by contrast, are commonly set up for whole-home heating as a baseline expectation. It is built into the idea of what a house is.

In Southern Europe, it’s common to heat the living room and leave bedrooms cooler. Doors get closed. People use blankets. Warmth becomes something you create locally, not something the building delivers globally.

So when Americans say “the heater doesn’t work,” what they often mean is: the heater works, but the home is not designed to distribute heat, and the cultural habit is not to try.

Also, many Southern European homes rely heavily on electricity for heating, which can be expensive in Europe relative to the U.S. That pushes behavior: heat less, heat smaller zones, accept colder rooms.

It’s not just engineering. It’s economics plus habit.

Damp makes mild winter feel vicious

A dry 18°C can feel tolerable.

A damp 18°C can feel like punishment.

Coastal areas in Portugal, northern Spain, and parts of France can have winter damp that sinks into walls, fabrics, and your mood. Humidity makes cold feel colder on skin, and condensation keeps surfaces colder, which increases that “can’t get warm” sensation.

This is why Americans are baffled: “It’s not even that cold outside, why am I freezing?”

Because your body is losing heat to cold floors, cold walls, and damp air.

Tile floors are a classic Southern Europe detail. They’re brilliant in summer. In winter, they become a constant heat sink. If your feet are cold, your whole body will read the room as cold, even if the thermostat says it’s fine.

This is also why Europeans lean so heavily on slippers, rugs, thick duvets, hot water bottles, and heated throws. It’s not quaint. It’s a practical response to housing that does not treat indoor winter warmth as a default.

“Just turn the heat up” doesn’t work the way Americans expect

In the U.S., turning the thermostat up usually results in a predictable change in comfort.

In many Southern European rentals, you can spend more and still not feel truly warm because the heat doesn’t stay. If the apartment leaks warmth, you are paying for constant replacement, not stable comfort.

And even when the system can deliver warmth, cultural norms shape usage. In places where a big share of households report they cannot keep warm, it’s not always because they don’t want to. It’s often because the combination of building performance and energy cost makes “American-style indoor warmth” hard to justify.

So Americans do what they always do: they try to buy comfort with energy.

Then the bill arrives, and they still feel cold.

This is the moment people start romanticizing Minnesota without realizing what they’re actually missing: a building that holds heat and a system designed to deliver it evenly.

How to pick a Southern Europe home that won’t wreck your winter

If you’re retiring to Spain, Portugal, or southern France, you have to shop for winter comfort explicitly. Sunshine is not insulation.

Look for:

• Double glazing and tight window seals, not just “nice windows”
• A clear heating system description, not vague “has heating”
• A layout that allows zone heating, with doors you can close
• Evidence of upgrades, renovated windows, added insulation, modern heat pump
• Signs of damp control, no persistent condensation, no musty smell, no mold marks
• Flooring reality, tile is fine, but plan for rugs and slippers

If you have access to energy performance information, use it as a screening tool. It won’t tell the whole story, but it will tell you whether the building is likely to hemorrhage heat.

And if you can, do the simplest test: visit on a cold rainy day. Sit in the living room for an hour without moving around. If you feel chilled in your bones, winter will be a daily tax.

Seven days to stop shivering without burning money

If you’re already there and winter is making you miserable, don’t treat it as a personality flaw. Treat it like a setup problem.

Day 1: Measure temperature and humidity where you sit. Stop guessing.
Day 2: Fix feet first, real insulated slippers and thick socks, because warm feet change everything.
Day 3: Create one warm zone and heat it steadily, rather than chasing warmth across rooms. Zone heat is sanity.
Day 4: Block drafts, add thick curtains, use door draft stoppers, close shutters at night. Heat you don’t lose is free.
Day 5: Add personal heat tools, heated throw, hot water bottle, heavier bedding, so you can keep air temps lower without suffering.
Day 6: If humidity is high, use a dehumidifier or strategic ventilation. Dry air feels warmer at the same temperature.
Day 7: Decide what you’ll change long-term, better heater, upgraded bedding, window seals, or a different apartment next winter.

This is not about becoming European overnight. It’s about avoiding the trap that sends people home: thinking winter discomfort means the move was a mistake.

Sometimes the move is fine. The apartment is the problem.