The most common method for estimating the basic thermal insulation (Icl) of a clothing ensemble is the use of tables with basic thermal insulation values for individual garments (Icli). Sprague and Munson (1974) found the following relationship between the thermal insulation of an ensemble and the summation of values for the individual garments (SIcli): Icl= k1SIcli+ k2where k1was a constant less than one, and both k1and k2were dependent on sex (female or male clothings). This equation has since been simplified in ASHRAE Standard 55-81 for thermal environment: Ic1= 0.82 SIcli.This paper presents an even simpler method. Instead of describing the thermal insulation of a single garment by means of the basic thermal insulation (SIcli), it is proposed to use the effective thermal insulation (Iclu). The result of the present study is then the following relationship: Icl= SIclu.The basic thermal insulation of a clothing ensemble is simply estimated as the sum of the effective insulation for the single garments (SIclu). Another important advantage of using the proposed method is that when expressing the insulation of a single garment by the effective insulation it is not necessary to perform the difficult measurement of the increased clothing area factor, fcl. The proposed relationship is based on measurements of 70 clothing ensembles in the range 0.7-2.6 clo.Units: SI