The Best Humidifiers for Bedrooms
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If you’ve ever woken up with swollen sinuses and a scratchy throat, only to be miraculously cured by a steamy shower, your bedroom’s lack of humidity is likely to blame. If this happens regularly, getting ahumidifierfor your bedroom will improve not only your comfort but also, potentially, your health.
“The mucosa is a special skin that lines our nose, throat, and lungs and helps fight off infection and filter the air,” said Dr. Amanda Furr, Chief Medical Officer atZarminali Pediatrics. “When humidity drops below 30 percent, the mucosa has a difficult time fighting infection and can make us more susceptible to infection from bacteria and viruses,” and can even lead to snoring. It’s also important for skin health. “When the humidity is low, dry environments cause skin to lose moisture. And that can then subsequently affect the skin barrier, leading to dryness, flakiness, and other irritation,” says Dr. Melissa K. Levin ofEntière Dermatology. Adding a humidifier increases the relative humidity in your sleep space, keeping that moisture in your body, where it belongs.
“Most humidifiers essentially work the same,” explained Dr. Furr. “They take water and aerosolize it so it drifts into the air.” The biggest differences have more to do with usability, noise level, and ease of cleaning than actual performance. Cleanability is especially important, since any mildew or bacteria that takes root in the moist, dark interior of a humidifier may be dispersed into your bedroom air if it’s not regularly cleaned. “Not daily, but every other day,” according to Dr. Levin, adding that “weekly is the max.” Keep in mind too that burbling noises or fan whirring that feels tolerable during the day may prevent sensitive sleepers from dozing off at night. With that in mind, I set off to find the easiest-to-clean and quietest humidifiers for bedroom use.
Our top picks
Whatwe’relookingfor
Capacity
A bedroom humidifier needs to be able to run through the night at its highest setting to improve your sleeping environment. I’ve found that larger-capacity humidifiers tend to produce more vapor than smaller ones, so I’d recommend something with at least 4 liters (or 1 gallon) of water capacity.
Dimmable display
Light-sensitive sleepers will want to make sure whichever model they choose has a display that can be fully turned off.
Type
Unless you know that fan noise helps you sleep at night, you’ll probably prefer a nearly silent ultrasonic humidifier to the noisier fan-and-wick-based evaporative model for bedroom use. These humidifiers convert water into vapor by passing it over a vibrating membrane, which atomizes the particles and disperses them throughout the room. Theoretically, you could over-humidify a space with an ultrasonic humidifier, but the best humidifiers all come with humidistats to prevent this. If you have hard tap water, you may notice a thin layer of fine white dust accumulating around the base of the humidifier as it runs. If this becomes a problem, the best models have demineralization cartridges you can install to prevent it. Some models also offer a warm mist mode that gently heats the water to a warm, below-burning temperature before it’s vaporized.
Now that ultrasonic humidifiers are commonly available with warm-mist mode, warm-mist humidifiers that heat water to the boiling point feel unnecessarily risky. “They can be a burn risk if not used properly,” said Dr. Furr.
Evaporative humidifiers consist of a fan that blows air over a moistened wick, drawing from a reservoir. This design makes overhumidification impossible, but requires high, noisy fan speeds to adequately humidify particularly dry environments.
Humidistat
Over-humidification can lead to mildew or fungal growth, and a humidistat helps prevent it by maintaining a set temperature. “For normal, healthy skin, you look for an ideal range anywhere between like 40 to 60 percent,” says Dr. Levin. Some humidistats are adjustable within a range, others will just automatically aim for that window.
Best humidifier for bedrooms overall
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Capacity:6L |Dimmable display:Yes |Type:Ultrasonic |Humidistat:Yes
When it first came out, this astonishingly affordable humidifier set a new bar for value in the ultrasonic humidifier category. It creates a tall plume of direction-adjustable mist, has a relatively seamless interior that’s easy to access and clean, and its display can be turned off with a single tap. The 6-liter reservoir holds enough water for two nights between refills, provided you remember to turn it off during the day. (You can easily set it to do so automatically if you connect it to Dreo’s smartphone app.) There’s also anoptional mineral-filtration cartridgeif you have hard tap water and experience white dust settling around the unit as it runs. The top comes off for easy refilling via pitcher, or you can lift the whole reservoir off of the base to fill it quickly under a tap. There’s also a separate chamber for adding essential oils if you’re into that kind of thing, but Dr. Furr recommends against this because it can irritate the lungs, “especially in people with Asthma or COPD.” It’s rated for rooms up to 500 square feet, but I think 350 is more realistic, since it lacks a fan to disperse humidity across a larger area. That’s still more than powerful enough for most bedrooms, and the humidistat prevents overhumidification in smaller spaces.
Best less-expensive humidifier for small bedrooms
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Capacity:4L |Dimmable display:Yes |Type:Ultrasonic |Humidistat:Yes
This humidifier is the smaller, slightly weaker version of the above. Dreo says it’s suitable for spaces up to 300 square feet, but I find it struggles to maintain an ideal humidity level in my 220-square-foot bedroom on colder nights, when the heat is working extra hard. I only recommend it if your bedroom is less than 200 square feet. The 4L HM311S is toaster-sized, whereas the 6L HM524S is more similar to a toaster oven, so it might fit better in a tight space. There’s aslightly cheaper versionthat doesn’t have Wi-Fi, but I don’t recommend it because it lacks a humidistat.
Best humidifier with warm mist for bedrooms
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Capacity:8L |Dimmable display:Yes |Type:Ultrasonic |Humidistat:Yes
The HM717S is not only bigger and slightly more powerful than the other two Dreos (Dreo recommends it for rooms up to 600 square feet), it also adds a soothing warm-mist setting, which I love for chillier nights or when I’m feeling under the weather. It’s the only thing that makes a meaningful difference in my tall-ceilinged Brooklyn apartment bedroom, where the building-controlled thermostat is always set too high. The 8-liter reservoir can last up to three nights in a row between refills if it’s turned off during the day. The extra half gallon of capacity comes from additional height, not width, so it’s not much harder to place than the medium-sized Dreo.
Easiest-to-clean humidifier
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Capacity:4.2L |Dimmable display:N/A |Type:Ultrasonic |Humidistat:Yes (no display)
The Carepod Cube Plus X50V prioritizes ease of cleaning above all else. It’s the only one with a fully dishwasher-safe stainless-steel reservoir and can humidify spaces up to 700 square feet with warm or cool mist. I do find its reservoir to be a bit small for how much vapor it puts out — it barely lasts a night on high — but its ease of cleaning makes up for many shortcomings. It even has a sanitize mode that heats the interior to a temperature high enough to kill any mold or bacteria. You could get away with the smaller, slightly more affordable Carepod One in a room under 500 square feet, but again, the lack of a humidistat-powered Auto mode is a bit of a tricky proposition for an already spendy device.
Best evaporative humidifier for larger bedrooms
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Capacity:7.6L |Dimmable display:Yes |Type:Evaporative |Humidistat:Yes
If you don’t mind a bit of fan noise, an evaporative humidifier, like the Blueair Dreamwell, can be a great choice for larger bedrooms. Since these humidifiers rely on a fan to disperse moisture, it can help moisture reach every corner of a larger space. Of all the ones I’ve tested, this is the easiest to refill because the entire top forms a funnel that allows it to be refilled while running. As you pour, a yellow LED indicator droplet fills to show progress, then flashes red to signal when to stop. Alternatively, you can separate the top from the bottom and bring the bottom to a tap for faster filling. The wider reservoir is easy to clean and even dishwasher-safe (although made of plastic, not steel). The wick, which draws moisture from the reservoir and delivers it to the fan, is machine washable and only needs to be replaced once a year. It also has a pump that should be descaled by soaking it in a dilutecitric-acid solutiononce or twice per winter — or more if you have exceptionally hard tap water.
Best hybrid air purifier and humidifier
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Capacity:3L |Type:Evaporative |Humidistat:Yes |Dimmable display:Yes |Smart features:Yes
There are better individual humidifiers andair purifiersout there, but this is the best all-in-one unit I’ve come across. Functionally, it’s pretty similar to the Dreamwell above, but has HEPA filters around the sides. The 3-liter capacity is enough to get through a night, but not much more. It’s expensive, but worth considering if your bedroom has limited floor space for multiple appliances.
Our experts
• Dr. Amanda Furr, chief medical officer atZarminali Pediatrics
• Dr. Melissa K. Levin, dermatologist atEntière Dermatology
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