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The heating bills have gone up here in the Uk and can’t afford to heat up the room and now finding I may have to quit playing the piano through the colder months, in the Uk It will remain cold until mid April so that’s a good 6 months of no practice .

I could just try practicing with cold hands but already I’m noticing it’s becoming very difficult to play comfortably and loosely enough with cold hands.

How do you warm hands when it’s cold. I’ve tried thin gloves but you loose the key feel and the material of the glove don’t grip so you end up sliding everywhere.

I might try a candle but that could be dangerous and I would have to keep stopping to get the warmth.

I would suggest washing the hands in nice warm water for some time, before you start playing. This will warm the hands up, and they should then keep warm enough for quite a while. My piano room is fairly cold in winter, and for me this works fine.

Maybe a small electric heater you turn on only when practicing?

I live in London so in UK like you and I have your same issue with the heating system and the price (which if you add to rent and all the cost of living in London it literally drain your wallet) plus I get cold hands and very cold ears (I come from Sardinia in the south of Italy, live in London from 6 years and still I am not used to this weather, to me already now is like a full December winter).

What I do is wash my hand with warm water, have a cup of warm coffee or everything you like (but warm) wear a jumper a tshirt down the jumper and play in the tiniest room of the house closing the door and if you can also close the curtains is even better.

If you have some pj top made with flannel or similar is great, once the whole body is warm usually my hands become warm as well, what you can do also is a good warm up at the piano, moving my fingers usually help to make them warmer.

Another thing you can do is check the isolation of your windows, I lived in so many rented houses where the isolation and the silicone around the window (and the window itself) was completely rubbish, I will take a look at those things as well.

I will try to keep the room where you practice as closed as possible and isolated, so do not leave windows open and stuff like that

I will not stop practicing and playing just cause the weather (also because you are at home not outside under the rain)

Sadly this is out of question, I did it one year ago and even turning it on just to make the room warm while practicing it increased the electricity bill so much, use the gas is still better than the electricity in my opinion.
To save some money he can close the heaters in the other rooms and have only the one in his practicing room going but still this will be a lot of money.

The only solution (which is the one that I also use) is layering clothes and try to keep the room as closed as possible, if he can play in the bedroom is the best place as in UK it seems always the warmest place in the house, the living is obviously the worst

Concert pianists (including Richter, I believe) have performed in near-freezing concert halls in winter in the good ol' days (or bad old days, depending on your perspective). They wear warm clothes and overcoats and hats, and fingerless gloves (hint, hint). Basically, lots of layers, a fleece, a warm jacket and a hat, like you're about to climb......not Everest (for which you'd need a down suit) but me (Ben Nevis). Don't forget to keep your feet warm: I wear a thick fleece-lined enclosed slippers with socks in winter, when at home (https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08CGXLD2D).

So my advice is to dress warmly and wear a tea cosy (on your head, though you can warm it on your hot teapot first), try fingerless gloves......after warming up your hands in a bowl of warm water, which you can then boil for your cuppa to avoid wasting H2O and warmth. Have a hot drink (or even better, hot thick soup), before you start playing. Also, do some jogging on the spot, skipping or jumping jacks to warm yourself up before you play. Skiers and mountaineers like me know of other tricks like reusable heat pads to warm up freezing fingers, and there are even electrically-heated jackets that one can buy (or use a hot-water bottle inside your jacket - not too hot of course).

When it's cold, I dress warmly as well as warm myself up as above, which also warms my hands up. I've never needed to wear gloves. Then I start playing and as soon as I'm able - especially after some few loud and fast scales up & down the keyboard, I play strenuous stuff which keeps me warm for the duration (stuff with lots of rapid runs, pounding octaves and chords), and skip all those slow, meditative, sleep-inducing, cold-inducing pieces like Gymnopedie (which I never play anyway: I like to keep my arms, hands & fingers busy). One thing I've noticed is how much heat your body generates, if your room is well-insulated. By the time I've finished practising, the room is often 2º C higher.......even with no heating on.

Fill a pot with really warm water, put on dish gloves, put your hands into the water and move your fingers, so you get your hands warm. Put a lid on the pot while you play, and when your hands get too cold again, put the dish gloves back on, and probably the water is still warm enough to once again do its trick. The dish gloves are really important, so you won't get dry skin. Also, nice not to have to dry your hands.

An occupational therapist told me that you should try to (literally) warm up your forearms in addition to your hands, as that's where most of your hand muscles are located. I got a decent sized heating pad that I will wrap around my forearms and hands for 10 minutes or so before playing when it's really cold.

I also have a few Warmies (same idea as those smallish beanbags you stick in the microwave to heat up), and I like keeping a warm one on the bench next to me to hold with whatever hand isn't playing, if I'm practicing one hand at a time.

weight training will improve the vascularity in your extremities, this will keep your fingers better oxygenated and warmer overall.

Find someone warm to hug!

You shine a couple of lights on the keyboard

Guessing you've already tried these, but to echo some of the others:

* making sure you play after you've eaten recently
* wearing a jumper and a knit hat while playing
* putting a blanket on your lap (bonus: with a hot water bottle)
* long underwear, etc.
* pause to do some jumping jacks or something to get your blood moving

I usually find my fingers get cold easily if my body is struggling to keep my core temperature up. If I'm well fed and well-wrapped, I can play piano for a pretty long time even when it's quite cold.

You could use a heat lamp to warm up the immediate area. Much less wattage (up to 250) than a regular heater. Need to make sure the light fixture is rated for the amount of wattage of the heat bulb.

(I’ve just dug out a few heat bulbs while cleaning out my shed, where they were used by the previous owner for keeping baby chicks warm in their boxes. I then found out online that the bulbs can be used for people and not just for baby animals!)

40 watt is ok but not led or energy saving.

Buy some fly-fishing fingerless gloves or something. Some warmth is better than none I guess.

The OP comes to us with a serious condition, CHS (cold hand syndrome), and you jest about it by suggesting ‘someone warm to hug.’


Perhaps you’d be more sensitive to this condition, CHS, if you suffered from it, like yours truly. Yes, I’ve been afflicted with CHS and CFS (cold feet syndrome) since childhood, and I am now the vice-chairman of a movement working hard on educating the general public on CHS & CFS!

I suggest you read through our vast literature, and who knows, perhaps you’ll change your attitude upon reading the story of little Timmy, afflicted with CHS from birth:

So cold were little Timmy’s hands, that everything he touched turned to ice; but that’s not even the worst part….

Little Timmy was a victim of child labor (flash-freezing meat with his two -very cold- hands)! Were you ever forced to flash-freeze meat with your own bare hands as a child, BDB?

Surely, you must’ve had many a’ warm Christmases by the fireplace; wearing cute mittens knitted by warm, loving hands, but poor little Timmy never had that luxury, for you see, not even the coziest mittens could warm his cold, little hands!

Oops, that sounds serious. It may be a spell. I think Timmy needs magic to solve this problem. A short Schubert piece might do the trick.

If I put my hands in warm water in the bathroom basin for five minutes the veins become much thicker and more visible than normally. They stay like it for a good while. The blood must be circulating better at least for a while.

Let it go Pete! Just let it go, ok?

Sure, go ahead and join the BDB wagon! and continue trivializing this very-serious condition!

Yes, Josephine, CHS is a very-serious condition, and suggesting that some magical short piece by Schubert could “do the trick” is cruel to the memory of Timmy.

Perhaps I didn’t mention it, but Timmy was worked to death (flash-freezing meat with his own bare hands); an image I won’t soon get out of my head:

Imagine poor little Timmy freezing them pork-chops from dusk till dawn with his cold, bare hands; only to leave the factory with nothing but a few sausages placed by ‘management’ into his hole-riddled pockets; but then, once he got home, Timmy couldn’t touch the sausages, for the sausages, too, would turn to ice, and if not for a good samaritan (cooking/feeding him the sausages), Timmy would go to a frozen bed, frozen sheets, and a frozen pillow, hungry!

Many years of this -frozen- reality ultimately led to little Timmy’s premature demise, and all I ask for is some sympathy, but no! Y’all can’t even do that!