The expansion law proposed by Padmanabhan suggests that the evolution of the volume of the horizon is due to the difference between the degrees of freedom on the horizon and the degrees of freedom in the bulk enclosed by the horizon. In formulating this law, Padmanabhan used the temperature, $$ T=H/2\pi $$ for a dynamical expansion. In this work, we modified the expansion law using Kodama–Hayward temperature, the dynamical temperature, for the horizon, first in $$(3+1)$$ Einstein’s gravity and extended it to high order gravity theories such as $$(n+1)$$ Einstein gravity, Gauss–Bonnet gravity, and more general Lovelock gravity. Contrary to the conventional approach, we expressed degrees of freedom of the horizon in terms of the ‘surface energy’ of the horizon. Also, we have expressed modified expansion law in terms of cosmic components. It then turns out that, it is possible to express the modified expansion law in a form as if $$T=H/2\pi $$ is the temperature of the dynamical horizon.