- The quick list
- 1. Best overall
- 2. Best easy-to-use
- 3. Best for dampness
- 4. Best for flats
- 5. Best clothes-drying
- 6. Best for small spaces
- 7. Best compact
- 8. Best quiet
- How we tested the best dehumidifiers
- Do dehumidifiers work and are they worth it?
- What are the main types of dehumidifiers?
- What to consider when buying a dehumidifier
- How much should I spend?
- Using a dehumidifier in winter
Best dehumidifiers 2023: Jump Menu
The list in brief ↴
1. Best overall: Avalla X-150
2. Best easy-to-use: MeacoDry Arete One
3. Best for dampness: ProBreeze 20L
4. Best for flats: Wood's MRD10
5. Best clothes-drying: EcoAir Desiccant DD128
6. Best space-saving: Vonhaus 12L
7. Best compact: Russell Hobbs Fresh Air Pro
8. Best quiet: De'Longhi Tasciugo AriaDry
How we tested
FAQ
Owning the best dehumidifier for your home can save you from common winter woes. Whether it's fogged-up windows, or even dreaded mould emerging on your walls, a dehumidifier can tackle condensation and keep your home healthy even when it's too chilly to crack open a window.
We've also been tracking this year's Cyber Monday dehumidifier deals for those who can hold off making the investment, but because winter is peak season for steamy windows and wet walls, we have noticed that many of the best dehumidifiers we've tested are selling out even before they go on sale.
Some will want a portable dehumidifier which can be stowed away in the Summer months, whereas others may face year-round humidify from using heated clothes airers or even your morning shower.
Although there are a few ways to tackle mould and prevent condensation on windows, investing in the best dehumidifier is one of the most effective solutions. By removing moisture by the air, it can keep humidity at a safe and comfortable level throughout the year.
We'd recommend taking a close look at the specs, because the right dehumidifier for you will depend on your home size and the severity of the issue. If you're unsure whether a dehumidifier is the right choice for you, we've consulted with experts and asked for the benefits of investing in a dehumidifier in the Winter.
The quick list
The best dehumidifier overall
If you're looking for a dehumidifier that's large enough to hold at least 16L of water, sleek, space-saving, and will dry your laundry, the Avalla X-150 is your perfect match. Rated the overall best on our list, this machine left the air in our home clean and moisture-free.
The best dehumidifier for ease of use
The MeacoDry Arete One is an all-around great dehumidifier. It's simple, easy to use, great for families with little ones, and quiet. It even has a laundry mode, handling your home's moisture and wet clothes.
The best dehumidifier for dampness
A wet, damp room is the worst, but thanks to this Pro Breeze model being able to hold a large capacity of 5.5L of water, removing 20L per day, your room will be left clean and moisture-free. This dehumidifier also has many cool features that are worth checking out.
The best dehumidifier for flats
Looking for a dehumidifier for your flat? Consider snagging the Wood's MRD10 model. It's petite in size but still powerful enough to draw in a lot of moisture. It even features a built-in handle, which makes moving the dehumidifier from room to room a breeze.
The best for drying laundry
The cool thing about dehumidifiers is that they can be used as a clothes dryer, which helps keep costs down. And this EcoAir dehumidifier is the best for drying clothes quickly. The Desiccant 8L features three drying modes and two laundry.
The best dehumidifier for small spaces
This Vonhause dehumidifier is the perfect option for smaller homes and tight storage space. It's lightweight, easy to maneuver, and has an automatic turn-off feature that comes in handy when its 2L tank has reached capacity.
The best dehumidifiers: tried & tested by our experts
Why you can trust Woman & Home Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
The best dehumidifier
Our first impressions of this machine are that it’s both compact and stylish in so far as similar models go. It’s a sleek tower design that is small enough to fit in most household spaces and has curved corners and a simple white gloss finish.
For the most part, it’s just a plug-in-and-go job, but this particular dehumidifier also comes with a two-metre long hose which needs to be fitted separately if you’d like to use it. It’s a simple feature but it is hugely helpful in spaces which need extra attention, like utilities or bathrooms, allowing you to have the machine on continually over the course of the day or night.
Despite its neat stature, it has a large enough capacity to deal with up to 46m² at any one time. However, we found it most efficient in smaller spaces where it drew in a surprising amount of water in just a few hours. This will fluctuate with the levels of humidity in any one environment, but our tank was full after half a day and needed emptying.
One of the rooms we made use of this in was an old bathroom without an electric extractor. Typically we’d have seen water running down the walls and condensation pooling on the shower walls and the windows. This helped keep the air much clearer and eliminated the most visible moisture in under an hour.
The clothes drying feature also more than halved the time needed for clothes to be ready to fold, compared to leaving them to air dry normally. Not only is this great in terms of time-saving, it also apparently saves up to 93% on energy bills, according to Avalla.
The best easy-to-use dehumidifier
Meaco is a brand that will no doubt be one of the first to pop up in your dehumidifier research. It has a few models, but we think the easy-to-use Arete One is likely its best value. We were impressed with the extraction potential (up to 10 litres in 24 hours) and the capacity of its easy-to-remove tank, given its modest size and price tag.
The matte off-white and charcoal finish, along with its sleek shape and minimalist, Scandi-esque design make it about as handsome and unobtrusive as a full-size dehumidifier is going to get. We loved the little extra details too, like the hidden handle that pops up from the control panel and the handy cord tidy which keeps the two-metre-long cable in check when the unit is not in use.
The Arete One is pretty quiet (we regularly forgot it was there, whirring softly away in the background) and there’s a night mode that turns the fan to low, kills the lights, and stops the buttons from bleeping, meaning it didn’t interrupt our snoozing at all.
It’s designed to extract moisture from space as big as 42m² (meaning it has whole flats and smaller houses pretty much covered) and can take care of a sizable load of washing pretty quickly, thanks to its laundry mode. Its premium functionality and mid-tier price make it a real standout model.
See our full MeacoDry Arete One 10L dehumidifier review
The best dehumidifier for damp areas
This compressor is the bulkiest model we tested – both in terms of size and weight. While it was tricky for us to lift up a set of stairs, it does have a fold-out handle and wheels on the bottom, so moving it from room to room was a piece of cake. the generous cord length also helped up its convenience.
Again, there are quite a lot of modes and customizable settings, which is great for efficiency and versatility, but means reading those instructions is a must.
Able to extract 20 litres of moisture a day from the air (the most of any model we tested), this generous appliance has a really decent talk capacity (5.5 litres) but can also be fitted with a hose. The tank simply slides out from the back of the unit and has a useful flip-up handle – this made it easy to carry to the slink without spillages, despite its size.
There’s an inbuilt sensor that allows you to set your desired air humidity and save on energy (the machine will kick in only when needed to maintain it), a 24-hour timer function, laundry mode, and – our favourite feature of all – a child lock.
Our 18-month-old is very into buttons right now and was getting heavily involved with all the dehumidifiers we tested. This model, though, protected against those chubby, ever-fiddling fingers: by holding the button down for three seconds we could lock and unlock the control panel easily.
The best dehumidifier for flats
This smart, slick dehumidifier was compact enough to store in smaller homes but had enough capacity to tackle a good surface area.
The Woods model comes in a few different sizes, with this one of the more petite in its range. Despite its stature, it's one of the more powerful machines we tested, and because of its size, it’s not too bulky to become cumbersome. In fact, we found this really easy to move around thanks to its in-built carry handle (although it doesn't have wheels as some other models do, so this might suit homes with more carpet than solid floors, where you might prefer wheels).
With just a handful of touch buttons, the interface is straightforward to use, allowing for quick programming and slick switching between functions when needed. You simply set the humidity to your preferred level and make use of the timer if you like, and away you go.
It emits a low hum, but nothing that would disturb you during the day. Come the evening there isn't a night mode which means you’ll be falling asleep to the light buzzing of an electronic device which we could personally do without (much preferring to switch its running time to daylight hours only).
The best dehumidifier for drying laundry
This is a versatile desiccant dehumidifier – while great for colder spaces, it’s also efficient in the home. We found it to be pretty powerful too, collecting moisture much more quickly than some other models, and the cord was long enough that it could reach a socket from all the places we needed to position it.
The laundry mode was especially effective: as well as capturing the moisture it also blew out warm air, meaning our load of washing was dry in a matter of hours as opposed to days. The timer function meant we didn’t have to leave it running all night to get those clothes dry either – it can be set to power down in two, four, or eight hours.
There’s a decent 2.2-litre tank on this model, which is easily removable from the side of the unit for emptying and even has a built-in handle for ease. But also, if you want to leave it for long periods of time, it also comes with a handy hose for continuous drainage.
It’s not the most intuitive to use, although that’s to be expected with a model that offers lots of different settings – we got the hang of it after going over the instructions a couple of times.
The fan is quite loud on all but the economy setting (which is designed for maintaining air quality once optimal dryness has been reached), meaning we felt this wasn’t one for the living room. But there’s no denying it’s a real workhorse and has serious speed and power. Plus, it has an anti-bacterial filter and Ioniser to purify the air.
The best dehumidifier for small spaces
Great for tight spaces, this well-made dehumidifiers benefits from wheels and can be easily stored in tight places like cupboards or even motorhomes.
The perfect mid-size dehumidifier, this model was compact enough to easily stow away after use but large enough to tackle a good surface area if localised - like a single room or cupboard, for instance. Aesthetically speaking it’s fairly unremarkable and in line with most other similar machines as a small white box with a touch screen panel on the top. The monitor tells you current humidity levels as soon as it’s switched on, and you can set a desired outcome too, to help you keep your home at your ideal specification.
Because we tested this in a very damp, under-the-stairs cupboard, the machine's automatic cut-off feature was really useful. It meant we could leave the machine running while we were out, to capture as much water as possible, without having to worry about overflow. In fact, in just a couple of hours, it had filled and switched off.
To avoid this, if you want to run it for longer, you can attach the continuous cycle hose, which allows you to have the water go straight into a sink, drain or larger receptacle. One thing to note is that despite the tank at the back being easy to remove and reattach, we found that it got really full before it switched off. Because of it its tall, narrow design it was easy to spill water out of when moving it to a sink to be emptied. This wasn't a huge issue, but we did slosh water over our carpet a couple of times while getting used to it.
As with most dehumidifiers, this was a bit noisy. Not so much that it would disturb you during the day, but you might not want it on at night (even with the night mode, in our opinion). While it’s running you can also hear the water being collected, which we oddly found quite satisfying.
The best compact dehumidifier
This stylish dehumidifier is one of the least imposing models we tested. It’s sleek and contemporary, not to mention small so blended into the background easily in whichever room we were using it. Its compact size means that it’s easy to transport too, and while that limits the capacity of the water tank, which slots in smoothly at the front, we think it's a reasonable pay-off.
Really easy to use, and its control panel is kept simple with three fan speeds – we’d barely glanced at the instructions before it was happily whirring away. As you’d imagine, the more powerful settings are noisier, but the lowest is still efficient and plenty quiet enough to have running in living spaces.
We found it worked well in the small and medium-sized rooms of our house where there was general winter dampness, although the cable struggled to reach some higher sockets in our kitchen – it is modest, though not disastrous, at 1.5 metres long. If you have larger rooms, a more severe damp issue, or masses of laundry to get dry, you might need something just a little heftier.
The best quiet dehumidifier
This was the quietest model on test – it didn’t even bother us when it was in the bedroom at night or running in the living room when we were watching TV. And thanks to its simple, smart design, it didn’t look out of place in either room. The 2.1-litre tank is really easy to remove and carry for emptying – the water is completely contained which prevents spillage.
Navigating the control panel is straightforward – there’s one laundry mode and three dehumidifying settings that allow you to choose your optimum humidity level for the air. Once your chosen level has been reached, the machine will stand down until it’s needed again.
There’s frost protection functionality here too, making it safe to use in colder environments, which was handy when we had no heating on during a particularly bitingly cold day.
It’s not all about controlling humidity though: hygiene is another of its concerns, and it has filters for dust and allergens as well as the capacity to neutralize undesirable bacteria to