Abstract In the 21st century, global climate change and the high level of fossil energy consumption have introduced changes affecting all sectors of the economy, including the building industry. Reducing energy consumption has become an important task for engineers because 30% of the total energy consumption is used for heating our buildings. Recycling the huge amount of industrial and agricultural by-products has also become urgent because due to their CO2 emissions, their combustion is not a state-of-the-art alternative. Besides rediscovering some long-known, nature-based insulating materials, there are also several research projects that have resulted in new products. In the last century it was relatively easy to review this product range, but nowadays there are so many kinds of nature-based thermal insulating products, there is a need for systematization, and more in-depth knowledge about them is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new systematization of nature-based thermal insulation materials, summarize the main knowledge about them, and indicate the direction of recent research and development.