<p>People often conceptualize abstract concepts in spatial terms. The present study investigated whether thermal concepts are systematically mapped onto horizontal and vertical spatial dimensions and evaluated competing accounts of conceptual representation. Across five experiments, participants responded to warm- and cold-related words using left–right (horizontal) or top–bottom (vertical) response keys. Results revealed a reliable right–cold response advantage along the horizontal axis, consistent with a left–warm/right–cold spatial association that diverges from previously reported left–small/right–large mappings and is difficult to reconcile with straightforward magnitude- and polarity-based accounts. We propose that it may reflect culturally entrenched sensorimotor routines associated with everyday faucet use, in which leftward and rightward actions are consistently associated with warm and cold water, respectively. This horizontal effect disappeared when temperature was conceptually irrelevant to the task, suggesting that spatial–thermal associations are context-dependent rather than automatically activated. Along the vertical axis, responses were consistent with a warm–top/cold–bottom mapping, in line with linguistic convention and embodied experience. Together, these findings suggest that spatial representations of temperature may be shaped by task context and experiential regularities and are broadly consistent with conceptual-metaphor accounts.</p>