Latent heat storage can be achieved through changes in the state of matter from liquid→solid, solid→liquid, solid→gas and liquid→gas.  However, only solid→liquid and liquid→solid phase changes are practical for PCMs. Although liquid–gas transitions have a higher heat of transformation than solid–liquid transitions, liquid→gas phase changes are impractical for thermal storage because large volumes or high pressures are required to store the materials in their gas phase.  Solid–solid phase changes are typically very slow and have a relatively low heat of transformation.
Initially, solid–liquid PCMs behave like sensible heat storage (SHS) materials; their temperature rises as they absorb heat. Unlike conventional SHS materials, however, when PCMs reach their phase change temperature (their melting point) they absorb large amounts of heat at an almost constant temperature until all the material is melted. When the ambient temperature around a liquid material falls, the PCM solidifies, releasing its stored latent heat. A large number of PCMs are available in any required temperature range from −5 up to 190 °C. Within the human comfort range between 20 and 30 °C, some PCMs are very effective, storing over 200 kJ/kg of latent heat, as against a specific heat capacity of around one kJ/(kg*°C) for masonry.  The storage density can therefore be 20 times greater than masonry per kg if an temperature swing of 10 °C is allowed. However, since the mass of the masonry is far higher than that of PCM this specific (per mass) heat capacity is somewhat offset. A masonry wall might have a mass of 200 kg/m, so to double the heat capacity one would require additional 10 kg/m of PCM.