Insulation, windows and roofing for Riviera homes, from English-speaking specialists

Buyers from Manchester or Hamburg arrive expecting a Mediterranean house to be cheap to run. Then the first February electricity bill lands. The coast is mild, but the houses were never built to hold heat. Walk round an older villa in Vence or a village house in Biot and you'll find the same three things: single panes in timber frames, a roof of curved terracotta tuiles canal with nothing between the tiles and the bedroom ceiling, and solid walls of stone or hollow brick with no insulating layer anywhere.

ADEME's breakdown for a poorly insulated house puts 25 to 30% of heat loss through the roof, 20 to 25% through the walls, another 20 to 25% through air leaks and ventilation, and 10 to 15% through the windows. Those figures describe heat leaving in January. In July they run in reverse. A terracotta roof in full afternoon sun keeps radiating into the rooms below until midnight, and a west-facing single-glazed window does the same from five o'clock onwards.

That's why the case for insulation here is about cooling as much as heating. A loft blown full of mineral wool keeps the heat in during the twelve cold weeks and keeps it out during the twelve hot ones, and it costs a fraction of what the air conditioning it replaces would burn through in electricity. The DPE now carries a summer-comfort indicator alongside the energy grade, so the calculation has caught up with what anyone who has slept under an uninsulated roof in August already knew.

Exterior shutters do a job an air-conditioning unit can't: they stop the sun before it reaches the glass. They are also the first thing a mairie will comment on when you change them, which is why the permit section below exists.

On their own, nothing, since 1 September 2026. Décret n° 2026-822 of 25 August 2026 (Journal officiel n° 0199 of 27 August) removed insulation, windows, ventilation, thermodynamic and solar water heaters and wood stoves from the parcours par geste; article 5 applies the new list to every application filed from 1 September. Wall insulation had already gone on 1 January. The single-measure route now pays for four things in mainland France: air-to-water and geothermal heat pumps, connection to a heat network, and removal of an oil tank.

Insulation and windows are still funded inside MaPrimeRénov' rénovation d'ampleur, the whole-house route. The conditions are firm: the house must be rated E, F or G on the DPE, the project must gain at least two classes, an energy audit comes first, a Mon Accompagnateur Rénov' adviser is mandatory, the house must be over 15 years old, and it must be your principal residence. That's a whole renovation programme. A window order on its own no longer qualifies. Our MaPrimeRénov' guide walks through it.

CEE premiums from the energy suppliers are now the main cash aid for a single insulation or window job. They cover loft, rafter, wall and floor insulation and window replacement, on a principal or secondary residence, provided an RGE contractor does the work to the required performance: R 7 for a loft, R 6 for rafters, R 3.7 for walls, and for windows either Uw 1.3 with a solar factor of 0.3 or Uw 1.7 with 0.36. The Côte d'Azur is climate zone H3, the lowest CEE band, so national comparison sites overstate what you'll get here. Ask the contractor for the H3 amount in writing.

TVA at 5.5% applies to energy renovation work in any dwelling completed more than two years ago, main home or holiday home, and the tax rules list roof, wall and floor insulation, windows, insulating shutters and mobile solar protection by name. No RGE is needed for the rate. The old separate Cerfa attestation was dropped in early 2025 (loi de finances 2025); you now certify on the devis or invoice itself that the building is residential and over two years old. The honest comparator is 10%, the rate on other improvement work, so on a 10,000 EUR job the reduced rate saves about 410 EUR. Roof repairs and a ravalement without insulation stay at 10%.

The Éco-PTZ is an interest-free loan, not a grant, and insulation and windows are still on its list after the August reform. Ceilings are 7,000 EUR for a windows-only project, 15,000 EUR for one other measure, 25,000 EUR for two and 30,000 EUR for three or more, over up to 20 years. Principal residence only, house over two years old, RGE contractor.

A French devis is a contract the moment you sign it, and for this kind of work the numbers on it decide whether you get CEE, the Éco-PTZ and the 5.5% rate at all. A one-line "isolation combles, 3,200 EUR" is a quote you can't check and a subsidy application you can't file. Ask for these, line by line:

• Surface and location. Square metres per element: loft floor, each wall elevation, each window with its dimensions and which room it serves.
• The performance figure. R-value in m².K/W for insulation, Uw and Sw (heat loss and solar gain) for windows, with the product name and thickness. If it isn't written, the CEE file will bounce.
• The RGE number and its domain. RGE is issued per trade. A qualification for heat pumps doesn't cover insulation, and the CEE and Éco-PTZ checks look at the domain, so a heat-pump RGE logo on an insulation devis fails.
• Who files the DP, and whether the start date waits for the mairie's answer.
• Scaffolding as its own line, with hire duration. On roofing and facade work it can be a fifth of the total.
• Dépose and waste. Removing old windows, old tiles and old insulation and taking them to the déchetterie (the council tip). None of it is free to dump.
• TVA per line, with the 5.5% attestation text for the energy works and 10% on the rest.
• Garantie décennale. Insurer and policy number. Roofing and ITE are structural enough that the ten-year cover matters; see what the guarantee covers.

Get two devis on this basis and the cheaper one usually stops being cheaper. The contractors we work with expect to be asked for all of it, in English.