Understanding comfort and senses in social practice theory: Insights from a Danish field study

Thermal comfort is central to energy consumption in housing and one of the main drivers behind worldwide GHG emissions. Research on residential energy consumption has therefore addressed comfort in relation to indoor temperatures. This paper argues that by widening the focus of comfort to include other aspects such as air, light and materials, more sustainable ideas of residential comfort might be developed. The paper takes a practice theoretical perspective but argues that the senses should be better incorporated into the approach to understand different aspects of comfort. The paper investigates how comfort can be understood as sensorial within theories of practice. This implies understanding how the senses are incorporated in embodied and routinised social practices, through which comfort is sensed and interpreted. Comfort is related to a range of everyday practices in the home, and the paper describes how aspects of comfort are perceived differently within different practices. The study is based on qualitative interview data from a Danish field study. However, the findings on how comfort in houses can be understood have a broader relevance as well. It is argued that this nuanced perspective on comfort can contribute to widening the debate and policy on residential energy consumption.