How much does it cost to work from home in 2025?

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Last edited

24/03/2025

The number of people working from home has declined significantly since 2021. Despite this, a quarter of employees still work from home at least sometimes, with 1 in 5 spending most of their working week at home.

The latest data suggests 540,000 people in Ireland mostly work from home, with many being able to save money on commuting costs and other expenses such as takeaway coffees and lunches.

These outgoings can add up to thousands of euros each year, meaning many home workers are financially better off.

But even if you don’t leave your house during the working week, there are often hidden costs which can also add up.

So how much does it really cost to work from home?

Here we’ll examine the cost of 5 common household expenses, using a hypothetical example: Anne, who recently transitioned to working full-time from her home office.

Lighting
Heating
Charging
Cooking
Consumption Habits

Because costs vary for each person due to different habits and circumstances, we first need to make a few assumptions.

Anne’s Story

Anne works a typical 9 to 5, 40-hour week from her home office. Taking breaks into consideration, she works an average of 7.5 hours per day on her laptop.

She sometimes cooks a quick lunch during her lunch break, and typically boils the kettle four times during her working day.

Living in a B-rated home with a heat pump, Anne occasionally increases its temperature in winter, and she does not yet have solar panels installed.

Because her office is dark, she uses energy efficient lamps to keep it ambient and light.

Finally, her electricity, WiFi and mobile phone bills are typical, with a standard electricity rate of €0.34 per kWh.

LED Lamps

Anne has 3 energy-efficient 10W lamps in her home office, which she uses for an average of 6 hours each day.

To calculate how much this costs, we have to multiply Watts by hours (30 x 6) and divide this by 1,000. Then we multiply by the electricity rate (x 0.34).

This means her LED lamps consume 0.18 kWh of electricity per day. With her electricity rate of €0.34 per kWh, Anne’s office lighting for 6 hours costs 6 cents.

Over a working week, her three lamps cost her 30 cents.

LED Lamps: €1.26 per month.

Heating

Anne has a heat pump which runs at a consistent temperature of around 17 or 18℃, to reduce costs and maximise efficiency. However, during winter, she sometimes increases the temperature to 20℃ in her home office.

Let’s assume Anne increases the temperature of her heat pump by an average of 2℃ for 4 hours, on half of her working days, for 5 months of the year.

A general rule is that there is a 10% to 20% increase in energy use for every 2°C increase in temperature.

So if Anne’s heat pump previously used 2 kWh, it could now use 2.2 to 2.4 kWh per hour – around 50 cents extra per day.

On average, heating the room costs her an €6.72 extra per month over the five winter months, which means that working from home costs her €33.60 per year on additional heating costs.

Heating: €6.72 per month.

Laptop Charging

As Anne uses her laptop for around 95% of her work, she tends to keep it plugged in for roughly 3 hours each day.

Her 45W laptop charger consumes 0.135 kWh of electricity daily, working out at 4.6 cents per day and 23 cents per week.

Cooking

When working in the office, Anne used to enjoy an occasional takeaway coffee and lunch, and ate a homemade sandwich at her desk most days. Working from home, she still nips out during her break 2 days a week to buy a sandwich.

On the other 3 days, she cooks lunch on her electric cooker.

Boiling the kettle with 2 litres of water takes around 3 minutes, costing around 5 cents. Cooking then takes another 10 minutes in total on two ~2 kW electric hobs, costing around 10 cents each.

This means that she spends 25 cents per day, or 75 cents per week cooking these extra meals (excluding food expenses).

Cooking: €3 per month

Phone Charging

Anne often uses her phone while working at home, so she charges it for one hour during the day.

Her charger is a standard 5W, so it uses 0.005 kWh per day. One extra hour of phone charging every day therefore costs her only 5 cents per month.

Kettle Usage and Hot Drinks

An avid caffeine consumer, Annn typically boils the kettle 4 times each morning, whereas she previously used the free coffee machine in her office.

Boiling water takes about a minute with her 3 kW kettle, with each cup of tea costing her 1.7 cents on electricity (0.05 kWh).

This means boiling the kettle 4 times every day costs 6.8 cents, or 34 cents every week, excluding the extra €3.85 per month on tea.

Kettle Usage / Tea Consumption: €5.28 per month

WiFi

As she already had unlimited WiFi, there are no extra expenses associated with internet usage.

WiFi total: €0 per month

The Annual Cost of Working from Home

In our example, working from home means Anne spends an extra €13.86 per year on lighting, €30 on heating, €10.56 charging her laptop, €33 on cooking, €0.55 on phone charging, and €58.08 on hot drinks.

This means that it costs Anne an additional €146.05 per year working from home, on top of any initial investments required for her home office.

While our example is plausible, it is merely hypothetical, with the true cost being influenced by factors such as consumption habits, location, energy efficiency, electricity unit rates and heating methods.

It could cost much more to work from home if your property is less energy efficient, and on the other hand, if you have invested in energy upgrades and your consumption habits have changed, you could actually make substantial savings.

Increasing your home’s energy efficiency through adopting renewable energy and improving insulation is the best way to significantly reduce your bills, and if you have solar panels installed, you could eliminate much of the energy related expenses of working at home.

Author:

Michael Malone

SOLAR ENERGY EDITOR

Michael Malone is Solar Energy Editor at Energy Efficiency Ireland. He is committed to highlighting the benefits of solar PV for people across the island of Ireland, and is eager to clear up some misconceptions which linger among the Irish public regarding solar energy.