Updated: 2/1/2024
Low humidity levels can dramatically affect your health and the health of your home. Dry air can cause dry skin, respiratory problems, and annoying static electricity. It can also lead to damaged floors, walls, and air quality. If you are looking for ways to raise your home’s humidity, continue reading for pro tips from the experts at American Air & Heat!
Ways to Raise Your Home’s Humidity with New Habits
- Switch up Your Shower/Bathing Routine:
As a simple DIY solution to add humidity to your home’s air, try leaving the bathroom door open when you shower. This can allow steam from the hot water to escape and fill other areas of your house with some extra moisture.
If you prefer to soak in a tub, leave the door open to the bathroom and let the water cool to room temperature before draining it. By doing this, you can allow the warm water to evaporate and escape into other rooms of your house.
- Drink Some Tea:
Even if you are a die-hard coffee drinker, you can broaden your horizons and add some natural humidity to your home by brewing some tea with a traditional teapot on your stove. This can be a particularly cozy ritual on cold mornings or evenings when the air is particularly dry.
- Allow Your Clothes and Dishes to Air-Dry:
Not only will this new habit save some energy, but it can be a great way to get more moisture into the air in your home. If you have some extra space, try line-drying your clothes on a drying rack in your house. This is also a better way to care for your clothes, as there will be less wear on the fabric. You can do the same thing with your dishes. After the last rinse cycle, open your dishwasher and let the hot, moist air fill your home while the dishes air-dry.
- Vent Your Dryer Inside:
If you don’t have the space or time to line-dry your clothes, consider installing a simple kit that can allow you to vent your dryer inside your house, rather than outside. With a simple kit, the moisture from drying your clothes can stay in the house. It can also cut down on heating costs by releasing additional warmth air into your home.
DIY Ways to Raise Your Home’s Humidity
- Place Bowls of Water on Top of Registers
Without having to spend a dime, you can increase your home’s humidity by placing a metal or ceramic bowl of water on top of your floor registers or radiant heating unit. The water will evaporate into humid air.
- Put Bowls of Water on Your Windowsills
On a sunny day, place a bowl or vase filled with water on your windowsills. The heat from the sun will gently warm the water and cause it to slowly evaporate into your air.
- Repurpose Candle Warmers
Do you have a candle warmer in your home that isn’t used very often? You can repurpose it into a small humidifier. For electric candle warmers, place a glass vase or cup filled with water on it. If your candle warmer uses an actual candle underneath, fill the top receptacle with water. Avoid letting either go dry while they are plugged in, so they don’t crack or break.
- Reuse Spray Bottles as Water Misters
Although this may seem like a low-tech, crude solution, this method can work nicely. If your house is especially dry, you can fill an empty and clean spray bottle with water and lightly mist rooms around your house. Be sure not to spray too much and use a bottle that can spray a fine mist.
Ways to Raise Your Home’s Humidity with Humidifiers
- Central Humidifier – If you need to humidify your entire home, this is a good option to consider. Available in either a “drum” style or “flow-through” style, a central humidifier is built into your home’s AC/heating unit. While this is an effective solution to humidify your entire home, the upfront cost and routine maintenance can be a drawback. To keep it working safely and efficiently, you must replace the water panel once a year and clean the drum and tray once a month.
- Evaporative Humidifier – Although an evaporative humidifier can be installed on any heating and cooling system in your home, it is ideal for humidifying individual rooms of your house. Taking in air through an internal fan, these devices humidify that air by running it through a wick filter that is saturated in water.
That humidified air is pushed out into the room. A drawback of this type of humidifier is the extensive maintenance. You must regularly clean the wick, reservoir, and any other part that interacts with water to avoid the buildup of mildew or mold.
- Steam Vaporizer – Steam vaporizers are excellent for winter-time use, as they give off a small amount of heat. The body of the unit contains water that is heated to boiling temperature until it vaporizes. Consequently, moistened warm air is moved around the room.
You can also fill a steam vaporizer with medicated liquid to help soothe sinus pressure or a sore throat and cough. There is no mineral buildup to worry about with this type of humidifier, but they are not recommended to use around children.
- Impeller – The most common type of humidifier, impellers release a cool mist into the air. Sent by a rotating disc through a diffuser, water droplets are broken into smaller drops that are dispersed into the air. The inside of an impeller humidifier must be cleaned after each use, and you must replace the filter as soon as it starts to become discolored. Providing mineral-free moisture, these humidifiers are clean, inexpensive, energy-efficient, and kid-friendly.
- Ultrasonic Humidifier – Also classified as a cool-mist humidifier, an ultrasonic humidifier produces humid air through ultrasonic vibrations. Not only are these humidifiers energy-efficient, but they are quiet, kid-friendly, and do not require replacement filters!
Leave it to the Professionals!
If you are looking for more long-term solutions to balance the humidity in your home, allow an expert from American Air & Heat to lend a hand! Our team is dedicated to helping homeowners find the right solutions for the best air quality. Allow one of our pros to help you today by filling out a service request form on our website!
