Thermal comfort markedly impacts our health, well-being and work productivity. This article is a review of practices generally adopted to quantify human thermal comfort in buildings. The review indicates that there is significant variation in comfort requirements due to diversified socio-cultural set-up and local adaptive behaviour. Thus, the localised thermal comfort models need to be developed to identify the actual comfort requirements helpful in drafting new local comfort standards. The study justifying the relationship between thermal comfort and indoor air quality are scant and need to be explored as such relationships are greatly dependent on occupant’s adaptive behaviour. Further, the interdisciplinary research on thermal comfort which not only helps in real time assessment but also covers other critical aspects like building architecture and energy consumption is lacking in the literature. Moreover, this review paves way for research on thermal comfort in countries where high building stock is expected in future.

This paper presents the systematic review on thermal comfort studies in Indian residential buildings, helpful in identifying the present research scenario, data gaps and policy interventions. Majority of the studies are performed in composite climate (ten), followed by warm-humid (seven) and a very few from cold (two) and hot-dry (two) climates. None of the thermal comfort study is found from temperate climate. Besides, the seven studies have considered multiple climates for assessment of thermal comfort in residential buildings. This shows that thermal comfort studies in Indian residential buildings are scarce, scattered and unorganized. Further, due to differences in socio-cultural set-up and local adaptations, the prodigious variations in occupant’s comfort requirements are reported. This review argues the dynamic modifications in individual behaviours due to change in cost of building energy services and comfort requirements. Only four studies have partially considered the occupant behaviour regarding control of indoor thermal environment. The results obtained from these studies indicate that there is strong need of localised thermal comfort model that will not only help in improving comfort requirements but also the building energy performance. Moreover, this review paves way for research development in India where high residential building stock is yet to be built.