Heating a Marrakech villa in winter

Your Marrakech villa is built for the summer, and it is judged in winter. January afternoons stay mild, nights drop to around 6 °C, and the house keeps a chill the sun cannot win back. Whether it hosts your guests or yourself, heating it is not a matter of adding radiators — it is deciding which rooms are heated, with what, and what the listing promises.

Does a Marrakech villa get cold in winter?

Yes, at night, and the house holds on to it. January is the coldest month: the World Meteorological Organization’s 1991-2020 normals for the Marrakech station give 19.1 °C in the afternoon and 5.9 °C before dawn, an average swing of 13 degrees within the same day. December and February are barely milder, with minimums of 7.3 °C and 7.6 °C. Frost remains rare in the city: 0.2 days a year below zero over the period.

It is the nights that matter, because a Marrakech villa is designed to make use of them in summer. Thick walls, marble or zellige floors, high ceilings, wide glass doors onto the pool: everything that keeps the house cool in July gives the cold back in January. The sitting room loses at dusk what the sun gave it at noon. Lunch is in shirtsleeves by the pool; after dinner, everyone reaches for a jumper.

Which heating suits a rented villa in Marrakech?

The kind that heats the rooms people use in the evening, that any guest can work out, and that burns nothing in a bedroom. Several systems often sit side by side in the same villa, and each commits the owner differently, in maintenance as well as in the listing.

Reversible air conditioning is often the right starting point: it is already there for the summer, and everyone knows how to use a remote. Electric heating has a downside the bill makes visible.

In Marrakech the electricity bill comes from the local utility, now part of SRM Marrakech-Safi. Above 150 kWh a month, billing is “selective”: the rate of the band reached applies to the month’s entire consumption, according to the government statement on the 2014 tariff review. A winter month that crosses a band therefore raises the price of every kilowatt-hour in the house, not just those used for heating. One more reason to heat only the rooms in use.

Who pays for heating in a rented villa in winter?

The owner, almost always, because in short-term letting the energy is included in the stay. Guests see neither the meter nor the bill; they see a warm house or a cold one. That gap is what costs money: a radiator left on in an empty bedroom, air conditioning turned up to the maximum with the window open, a boiler heating nine rooms when the group is using four.

The answer is not rationing. A cold house is paid for in reviews, and a rating weighs on the listing far longer than a winter bill.

The answer is to set the house up before the arrival: thermostats programmed, unused rooms closed and switched off, two lines of instructions in the welcome book. Heating is sized for the stay that has been booked — the number of bedrooms in use, the evenings spent out — not for the villa’s maximum capacity. It is a management setting, not a sacrifice.

What should the listing say about heating in winter?

Which rooms are heated, and by what: nothing more, nothing less. Airbnb’s rebooking and refund policy covers an amenity described in the listing that is missing or does not work, and names heating and air conditioning systems explicitly. “Heating” ticked for a villa where only the sitting room is warm opens the way to a claim from the first group that sleeps in the other bedrooms.

The listing has a section for exactly this: Airbnb lists “Heating and cooling” among its amenity categories. A precise line beats a broad tick-box: reversible air conditioning in all five bedrooms, open fire in the sitting room, unheated pool. The pool matters as much as the bedrooms, because nobody complains about cold water the listing warned them of. It is one of the easiest bad reviews to avoid, and it is what our Airbnb property management in Marrakech reviews before winter.

What are the risks of gas heaters, open fires and braziers?

Carbon monoxide, which comes back every winter. In December 2025, Azilal province recorded 48 poisonings linked to heating appliances, according to the regional health directorate as reported by SNRT News. Azilal, in the mountains, is colder than Marrakech, but the causes identified apply to any house: butane, charcoal or wood appliances used in closed rooms, without a flue for the combustion gases, or badly maintained. The gas has no colour and no smell.

The health authorities ask households to air the house every day, have appliances serviced by a professional, switch them off before sleeping, and never burn charcoal or use a barbecue indoors. The Health ministry also prohibits installing a gas water heater in a bathroom. For a rented villa, that comes down to three rules: no combustion appliance in any bedroom, a fireplace with a swept flue, and a carbon monoxide detector, covered in our piece on equipping a rented villa.

Why is hot water the first thing to run out in winter?

Because the same tank has to heat colder water for just as many showers. In winter, mains water arrives cooler than in summer, and every litre takes more energy to come up to temperature. Guests, for their part, come back from a day in the Atlas or the medina and all shower at the same time, at the end of the afternoon. The tank that coped in May can run dry before the last shower.

A solar water heater adds a season of its own: shorter days and a lower sun, so less hot water just when demand is highest. The electric or gas back-up then has to be in working order. The health rule does not change: hot water kept above 50 °C, as for getting the villa ready after the summer. What changes is the test: run it on an evening when every bedroom is occupied, not on a morning when the house is empty.

What should you check before winter when you live far from your villa?

Seven questions we ask in October, before the first cold night. Which rooms are heated, and by which appliance? When were the boiler and the chimney flue last serviced, and by whom? Does the fuse board hold when every bedroom is heating at once?

Is the hot-water tank sized for the advertised capacity? Is there still a gas appliance in a room where someone sleeps? Does the listing say exactly what is heated, pool included? And who calls in the day before an arrival to bring the house up to temperature?

The last one belongs to the owner who lives abroad, whether the villa is let or kept for the holidays. A house warms up in hours, and nobody can do it remotely. That is what our property management covers: a visit the day before, the house brought up to temperature, a report on what was switched on. Damp in a closed villa is a matter of upkeep, which we cover for a riad in the medina.

Would you like to know how your villa will get through the winter, room by room? We’ll carry out a free, no-commitment assessment within 48 hours.