Gaskets play a significant role in the thermal insulation of refrigerators. Previous studies mainly focused on how to obtain the heat and moisture transfer load of a given gasket, but lacked appropriate structural improvement measures and their effect on the heat leakage load and energy consumption of refrigerators. In this paper, the heat transfer analysis of an original gasket was conducted via numerical simulation. It was found that the main thermal insulation weaknesses of the original gasket are gasket-cold air, gasket-outer shell of the cabinet, gasket-inner lining of door and gasket-hot air. Thus, adding an auxiliary-airbag to the original gasket and a comprehensive new-design gasket were proposed to improve the thermal insulation. Compared with the original gasket, the numerical simulation results showed the heat leakage loads of the auxiliary-airbag and new-design gasket were reduced by 18.44 % and 27.49 %. The total heat leakage loads of refrigerators equipped with improved gaskets were reduced by 4.46 % and 6.64 %. The effect of two structurally improved gaskets on the refrigerator energy consumption was experimentally studied. The repetitively measured results showed the energy consumption of refrigerators with the auxiliary-airbag and the new-designed gasket were reduced by 0.93 % and 3.19 %. The reason why the reduction in refrigerator energy consumption is lower than the reduction in heat leakage load is due to the difficulty in achieving the designed assembly state of the gasket during actual installation. Based on the holdings of refrigerators around the world, it is estimated that the refrigerators energy consumption can be reduced by 106.776 billion kWh per year and carbon emissions can be reduced by 12.74 million tons per year when using the new-design gasket proposed in this study. •A method to determine the thermal insulation weaknesses of the gasket is proposed.•Comprehensive structural improvements to reduce gasket heat load are proposed.•Thermal insulation improvement of gaskets will decrease refrigerator temperature.•Energy consumption of refrigerators with new-design gaskets is reduced by 3.19 %.