Whole house ventilation (WHV) systems, currently uncommon in UK housing, have the potential to contribute towards the provision of more sustainable and comfortable new homes. This research adopts a socio-technical approach: 1) to explore how residents of low energy housing with WHV technologies are ventilating their homes, and to understand to what extent their ventilation practices have adapted since living with WHV, and 2) to understand the potential role of various stakeholders in enabling residents to adapt their ventilation practices to coincide with those anticipated by the buildings’ designers and required to meet energy performance targets. Research was conducted at three case study social housing developments, each with a different whole house ventilation system (mechanical extract ventilation, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and passive stack ventilation). Qualitative methods were used to collected and interpret data from the case studies. These data are explored through the lens of social practice theory to generate insight about how ventilation practices may be constrained and enabled by the physical arrangement of ventilation systems within the home. The investigation of ventilation routines indicates that individuals do not always use technologies according to the design intent. Furthermore, residents are not always the sole practitioners of ventilation but share this role with a network of actors who appear to have contributed to different elements of observed ‘ventilation practices’. By exploring moments of ‘disruption’, the study found that while some ventilation activities have adapted since living with WHV, this process of change is slow and unpredictable and not always aligned with designers’ intentions for sustainable lifestyles. The thesis highlights the need to consider how occupants’ ventilation practices are shaped during the design, construction and handover of new low energy housing to ensure that new homes can enable, and perhaps even encourage, people to live comfortably ...