Every few years, a product explodes into the marketplace, and you can only say “finally” with equal parts relief and enthusiasm. Quilt is that for me this year. Mini-splits are famously huge and bulky, look like plastic, and are such an eyesore (and impossible to disguise, especially in an older style home!). Quilt not only heats and cools better, but it can be disguised in your room, not taking away from the overall design. Hallelujah. Form meets function, folks. As someone who was about to put a bunch of ugly mini splits in our 1850s guest cottage, I was lamenting how bad they were going to look against all our pretty old beadboard. Then I saw my friend Brady’s partnership with what seemed to be a very attractive and simple alternative. I reached out, did the research, and am THRILLED to be part of the solution to replace ugly mini-splits with this new genius invention that’s actually attractive.. Even if you have no intention of ever needing an all-in-one heat and AC unit, keep reading to see what good product design looks like. It’s like the Apple of home tech (and works extremely intuitively). Let’s break it down.

Wait, What Is A Mini Split?

It’s a standalone heat and air conditioning unit that you can opt for in rooms where you don’t want to redo or put in an entire HVAC ducting (which is painfully expensive and laborious). Instead of being inside the wall, it’s essentially hung inside the room where you need to heat/cool, with a portal to an exterior heat pump right outside (so it has to be an exterior wall). You opt for it for outbuildings (like our gym), or if you did an addition and didn’t want to tie into your HVAC, it will do the job on its own. The Quilt unit can heat or cool up to 480 sq. ft. of space. The unit on the outside is a heat pump, which basically moves temperature from inside to outside. This means you get localized control (like in a hotel room), without the inefficiency of window AC units and the inconvenience of space heaters. 

Why Is Quilt Better Than The Others?

It’s not like I’ve tried every one on the market, but we had a crappy one in here that never worked, and boy was it ugly (this could have been our former contractor’s fault – not my brother, btw). The gym was super cold in the winter (we had a small heater) and like a sauna if you worked out past 11 am in the summer. PROBLEM SOLVED. But more importantly, it is the most efficient mini split on the market with an industry-leading SEER2 of 25, HSPF2 of 12, Energy Star certification, and their Auto-away feature (again, it’s a 2-zone heat pump, which is more energy efficient than a typical heating and cooling machine). We used heat pumps in our entire house for this reason. When it comes to sustainability, my philosophy is not to replace something that works fine for something that works better, BUT if you are in the market for a new one or if, like ours, yours is broken, then you sure should get the thing that works the best (should that be in your budget).

So, Why Is The Design So Great?

Yes, it works great, but what got my attention is that you can customize the front to be any color and almost any finish. So that means you can wallpaper it, you can panel it with beadboard, or even wood! It comes white or with a white oak front (the white would be what you’d want if you are customizing).

The unit itself is also so compact, unlike other bulky mini-splits. It’s only 7 7/8 inches tall; many others are pushing a foot! You pop the front panel off (so easy, I did it myself), then wallpaper or paint it the color of your walls to disappear.

We obviously chose white here to blend in, and in our guest cottage, we’ll put whatever paneling is in each room on the front. It’s honestly GAME CHANGING, especially for those of us who have a vintage home that would be drastically compromised, design-wise, if we had to use the bulkier old type of mini split.

Is It Hard To Install?

We hired Greensavers in Portland (shout out to them – they did an incredible job, in and out in 4 hours!!). Hanging it on the wall inside is super easy (it just goes on these cleats), but the wiring on the outside is what you’d need some experience in (or again, hire out for). Here’s the breakdown, really quick:

1. The exterior unit has to have clearance around it (both to have access to air as well as per local codes)
2. You’ll need an electrician to do the electrical work.
3. You need to make sure you have enough power at the source and that you can tie in easily. If this seems like a barrier, know that many companies, like Greensavers, will execute the entire job, so you don’t have to think about it (again, ours took 4 hours – so fast).
4. Everywhere charges differently for the install; however, Quilt’s is in line with the industry.
5. The hole behind the unit is pretty small (about 3″), so you don’t need to worry too much about your framing, but you will need to make sure you have something to anchor to (a stud).

How Do You Use It?? Is It Easy??

One of my first questions to the Quilt team was “how smart is it, because I like a little smart but not that smart”. I do NOT want something with so many bells and whistles that I can’t figure out how to turn it on and off, and should it ever need repairs, no one else can either. It’s my personal opinion that we are over-teching our things in our home (TVs on the fronts of fridges, anyone?), which honestly just makes them more vulnerable to problems and creates so much frustration (for me, at least). Quilt is extremely simple and intuitive.

1. It’s both a wall-hung thermostat (the “Dial”) and an app. If I forget my phone in my house, I use the wall dial. If I’m on the Peloton and I want to cool it down or turn the heat off, I use my phone app. So easy.
2. You can set it at a specific temperature and never need to change it. One and done.
3. You can schedule it to come on and off at certain times – like we have it set for Monday – Friday to heat up to 65 degrees starting at 5 am (but not the whole night) and then turn off at 11 am. In the summer, we both work out in the morning (and having the doors open is lovely), but if we wanted to use it in the middle of a hot day, it would cool the entire room down from 90 degrees to 75 in minutes (room size TBD).
4. You can have multiple rooms on the same app, just labeled separately. Extremely easy.
5. There’s a very helpful (and money-saving) feature called ”Auto-Away” that can detect if people aren’t in the room and will turn off the device for you. They tested it in a 3-bedroom home, and they cut their energy use by 44%!
6. I even love that the wall dial plugs in, so I don’t have to worry about changing batteries!!! It’s a sleek white cord (so obviously install near an outlet).

I’m famously tech-adverse and was able to download the app and figure it out all by myself (I made the Greensavers expert stand next to me just in case, lol, but I didn’t need him :)) But if you have an installer make sure that you are all set on your app before they go just so you don’t have to think about it.

Is It So “New” That We Should Worry About The “Bugs” Getting Worked Out?

This has happened to a lot of us – a new product launches, but then the better version comes out the next year (as was the case with our Soake pool – integrated pool covers now! and our cold plunge integrated cooling unit now!). That’s fine if it’s something easy to replace or upgrade (or in those cases if it works as-is just fine), but for anything renovation-based, I do NOT want the beta model that might still have tech bugs (fine if the design changes to be even better – thus is just innovation!). So I asked Greensavers, candidly, this before I committed (they aren’t the inventors of the product, just the installers, and they use all brands). He reassured me that the unit has a classic heat pump mechanism that has been perfected for years and years – i.e., they didn’t reinvent a new type of heat and AC, they just redesigned what already works efficiently to be better for the consumer (both in the sleek design and the simple app/Dial). But what’s even cooler is that they have what’s called “over-the-air” updates. What that means is that as their technology evolves, you can update your existing mini-split without buying a new one! I think that’s using technology in the best way possible because you don’t have to replace an old unit that will likely end up in a landfill, but instead you get to improve the one you originally bought. More of this, please!

I’m extremely excited that there is now a product to solve all our bulky mini split woes. I wanted to try Quilt out here first, with just one unit, to make sure it works really well before committing to multiple units in our vintage guest house restoration. But knowing that I can get efficient (and powerful) heat and AC in that house, clad with our pretty beadboard to disappear and not ruin the look of the vintage room, is a real gift. Of course, now I want one in the garage instead of our stupid Cadet heater, but unless Quilt builds a time machine, I guess I’ll live with that for a bit.

This post is indeed sponsored by Quilt, a partner that I pursued and am so glad to be a part of its success.

*Photos by Kaitlin Green