>>78715694Stoves are generally more efficient, especially with pellet fuels (high surface area, consistent fuel quality), but they don't look as good in operation and they can take a long time to make a room feel warm (though they'll also keep it warm for longer).
>>78720461Insulation doesn't heat your home, most people who still have a stove or fireplace have one from necessity because they live further out than the gas lines. Electric, oil burning and propane burning systems are available, but each of them requires your home to be fitted out at fair expense with the necessary equipment, and they require constant maintenance (in fairness, a stove done properly requires an insulated, lined flue in the chimney, and stoves and chimneys in regular use should be swept annually).
Most people who think they have a well-insulated home have little more than double glazing, cavity insulation and loft insulation. In reality, you should have both heavy-duty roof-line and loft insulation (the latter replaced at 10 year intervals, max), wall insulation (checked and replaced every time you've had mice or other rodents confirmed in the building), floor insulation (to at least the standard of your walls and loft, and if you have concrete floors - laid underneath them), insulated doors and windows (wood is surprisingly bad at retaining the heat of your home) and so on.
There are still huge variables in heat loss and efficiency even in similarly-insulated homes - a building with concrete construction (most modern apartment blocks, for example) will lose heat quickly because concrete is a terrible insulator (worse than wood); a building with concrete roof tiles loses heat marginally faster than one with slate or wooden shingle, but slower than one with *most* grades of tar-paper. These marginally colder homes also use more electricity for lighting if they use energy-efficient non-halogen non-led bulbs, because those fluorescent bulbs need to heat up to best operating temperature.
