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Achieving low energy demand in buildings is crucial in climate change mitigation. In the Global South, however, reducing the energy demand blanketly is not advisable due to critical gaps in access to the basic services supporting Decent Living Standards (DLS). Current energy demand scenarios mostly overlook achievement of DLS. Furthermore, model limitations in representing distributional aspects hinder modelling future energy demands to meet DLS. Supported by new evidence from a set of detailed sectoral and integrated assessment models, this research contributes to bridging this gap by exploring future trends in DLS achievement and linkages with energy demand in the Global South, focusing on the residential sector in India. We consider four key dimensions of DLS: sufficient space and durable housing, thermal comfort, access to basic appliances and to clean cooking. The results show that the substantial increase in residential floor area will not guarantee an improvement in DLS levels due to continuing non-durable housing construction. Also, despite an increase in space cooling demand of almost 126–800 % by 2050, only 15 % of the population will have access to residential air conditioning, mostly in urban buildings. In contrast, access to clean cooking will increase to almost 80 % under current policies, with energy demand would decrease by 24–49 % by 2050, while majority of the population will have access to clean cooking due to energy efficiency improvements. These findings underscore the importance for India to adopt high efficiency measures that can reconcile seemingly divergent goals of improving well-being while reducing energy demand.