In this paper, the effect of surface radiation in a square cavity containing an absorbing, emitting and scattering medium with four heated boundaries is investigated, numerically. Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to solve the energy equation of a transient conduction–radiation heat transfer problem and the radiative heat transfer equation is solved using finite-volume method (FVM). In this work, two different heat flux boundary conditions are considered for the east wall: a uniform and a sinusoidally varying heat flux profile. The results show that as the value of conduction–radiation decreases, the dimensionless temperature in the medium increases. Also, it is clarified that, for an arbitrary value of the conduction–radiation parameter, the temperature decreases with decreasing scattering albedo. It is observed that when the boundaries reflect more, a higher temperature is achieved in the medium and on boundaries.