Are heated airers worth it?

Are heated airers worth buying? The rampant demand for them this winter and last year strongly suggests they are. 

This September I ran our most recent heated airer tests – putting more of the newest and most popular models on the market through their paces to bolster our coverage in this hot market.  

Our previous researcher designed an extremely thorough and perfectly repeatable test programme, so that models tested at different times are directly comparable. Now, a few years on from the first batch, we've cumulatively hung up 300+ wet garments and literally watched them dry for more than 100 hours. 

We now know a lot about how much energy airers use, and how evenly and quickly they dry wet items. We've reached the conclusion that whether a heated airer is worth it depends on what you currently use to dry clothes, how often you dry them and how much you're prepared to pay in running costs. 

Let me explain...

I don't own a tumble dryer and I'm still not sure I'd get a heated airer. I have a traditional clothes horse, leave the clothes to dry overnight, and use my trusty dehumidifier to deal with any condensation.

Then again, I live in a one-bedroom flat with my partner, producing two-people's worth of dirty laundry a week. What if you have a family-sized load to tackle? 

• If you already have a tumble dryer, the odds are it will be faster (and cheaper, if you do lots of washing) for you to stick with that.
• Don’t have a tumble dryer? A heated clothes airer will dry your clothes quicker than air drying, but may cost you anywhere from about £74 to £182 a year to run (based on drying a 5.7kg load three times a week), versus air drying them for nothing.

See what all the hours of reviewing and testing told us in our guide to the best heated clothes airers.

Are heated airers any good?

Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. That certainly gave me pause for thought.

Our heated airer test has seen me drying cotton clothes over and over again on the same clothes airers to check how long each takes to dry that amount of laundry.

I've found that – all conditions being equal – heated clothes airers do have very consistent drying speeds. They've always taken the same amount of time, give or take about 15 minutes. 

They also dry clothes a good deal faster than non-heated clothes airers, taking around four to seven hours – depending on the model – to dry a cotton load.

Unsurprisingly, the heated airers with hotter bars dry clothes faster, but cost more per hour to run. 

Tower heated airers

Tower heated airers are the best in my opinion. They look like a tower, and usually have two or more tiers to dry clothes on. 

They can be tall, but take up less floor space than winged heated airers, and pack more drying space into a smaller footprint. 

Their bars often run a little warmer than other types of heated airers, so typically have a good balance of speed (4 hours 40 minutes on average for a small cotton load) versus cost to run (8p per hour on average).

Tower heated airers we've tested and where to buy them

Read our reviews of the best heated airers 

Winged heated airers

Winged heated airers fly in at a close second. They look like a traditional clothes horse, but they also have 'wings' that can be folded out for a bit of extra drying space. 

They have a bigger middle section so are a good option for drying larger items, such as towels and bedding. 

They're a tiny bit cheaper to run on average than tower heated airers (6p per hour on average), but we found they take noticeably longer to dry your laundry (typically 5 hours 54 minutes for a small cotton load). 

They're also larger once unfolded, so if you're tight on space they could be a pain to navigate around while they're up.

Winged heated airers we've tested and where to buy them

Drying pods

Drying pods are the hare to the heated airer's tortoise. They blow hot air into a sealed pod, drying cotton clothes in 2 hours and 13 minutes on average. That's in line with the speed of a tumble dryer. 

However, as in the fable, the slower and steadier clothes airers win the race – in my opinion. 

That's because drying pods fit far fewer clothes in them in one go, compared with heated airers, so it costs more to dry the same amount as you'll have to run them multiple times – 55p on average to dry a small cotton load, versus the 37p average for regular heated airers.

That said, I have tested one airer of the drying pod variety that was quicker to dry and cheaper to run than the others. Read our heated airer reviews to find out which one it was.

Drying pods we've tested and where to buy them

Do heated airers cause condensation?

Drying wet clothes releases moisture into the air. Heated airers are no exception, and increasing the amount of moisture in the air will increase the risk of condensation.

The three best ways to deal with condensation while using heated airers are:

1. Have a window open. This clears the 'wet' air out and lets fresh air in. But if it's too cold for this, there are other options too.
2. Run a dehumidifier while the clothes are drying. They remove moisture from the air and they'll actually help your clothes dry even faster, if you don't mind the extra running costs. See our pick of the best dehumidifiers for more information.
3. Use a window vac. This is a good solution, and was our previous tester's personal favourite. You literally hoover the condensation off your windows. Take a look at the best window vacs to find the best one for you.

Can't you just wipe away the condensation with a towel? Yes, but if you do that, and then dry the towel on the radiator, all that happens is the water in the wet towel goes back into the air, which will then go back onto your windows – a vicious circle.

Are heated clothes airers cheap to run?

My best advice for getting the most value out of your heated airer is to make sure you fill the clothes airer completely each time you use it.

Every airer I’ve tested simply turns on and off, so it costs the same per hour to run whether you’ve got an item of clothing on every bar or not.

There are no heated airers I've seen that let you turn on just a few of the bars at a time. So if you don’t fill it up, you’ll have empty bars heating up but drying nothing – so you'll waste money.

Here are some more specific figures from my hours of measuring heated airer running costs to help you decide if one is right for you:

• The average cost per hour to run a heated airer is 7p, but it takes a few hours to dry a load, so on average it costs 37p to dry a cotton load – that's £58 a year if you use it three times a week.
• Drying pods will cost around £86 a year for the same usage, but get your clothes cupboard-ready quicker.
• It'll cost about £143 a year on average for a heated airer if you have big loads of laundry, where you can't fit it all on the airer in one go and would need to use it multiple times. That's about the same as a condenser or vented tumble dryer.
• For comparison, energy-efficient (but admittedly pricier-to-buy) heat-pump tumble dryers cost about £51 a year doing three large loads of laundry a week. 

Discover the best and cheapest way to dry your clothes indoors

Is a heated airer with a cover better?

Some people swear by putting a cover over their heated airer to speed up the drying time. But, from my experience, this doesn't always work.

I've tested three airers that came with covers, and none of them dried faster than the ones that didn't have a cover. In fact, some of them were among the slowest.

I also tried putting a bedsheet over one of the slower heated airers to see if that could speed things up, as some people claim on social media. But I didn't find any difference to drying times when doing this.

I test the airers with cotton clothing, so you may find a difference with clothing of different fabrics, but I'd be surprised. I'm almost certain the reason is because of the material the airers' covers are made from. 

Heated airers come with plastic covers. The plastic doesn't let moisture through, and the covers only have a few small holes at the top to let some damp air out.

As the moisture from the clothes has nowhere to go, it makes a hot, but very humid environment under the plastic cover. It's this high humidity that slows down how quickly the clothes dry.

The ideal cover will trap heat, but be breathable enough to let some moisture out so it doesn't get too humid.

You could also use a heated airer in combination with a dehumidifier. This would also remove moisture from the trapped air and speed up the drying time even more.

Do heated airers help to heat a room?

Some people say that a heated clothes airer not only dries clothes, but it also heats up the room at the same time. But, in light of my time drying clothes, I would say otherwise.

The laboratory where I test all the heated clothes airers is about 30metres square. Not a small room, admittedly, but I would typically have two heated clothes airers running at any given time. 

The temperature didn’t noticeably increase in the room, even with all these running simultaneously.

If you’re in a very small room, or have the heated airer right next to your desk while working from home, you may get a bit of heat to take the edge off. But it's certainly not a replacement for your radiators and central heating.

Want an extra heating boost? See our pick of the best electric heaters

We're not able to show every retailer and cheaper prices may be available. Running costs assume an electricity cost of 24.5p per kWh.