How To Raise Humidity Levels In Your Home This Winter
The trees are bare, the days are shorter, the temperature is dropping, and the humidity levels in your home are plummeting. It must be winter in Ontario.
Our low-humidity and low sunlight winters bring with it a slew of health problems that, if left unattended to, can cause dry, flaky skin, or worse, respiratory problems.
What is considered low humidity?
Any humidity level below 30 percent is considered uncomfortable. The ideal range for household humidity is between 30 and 40 percent. If your humidity level gets above 45 or 60 percent, it’s definitely too humid. High humidity can cause condensation on windows and exterior walls and that could result in mould.
In this blog, we present you with five different ways that you can raise the humidity level in your home this winter.
1. Use a portable humidifier
This is the most obvious solution to the problem of low-humidity households in the winter. Humidifiers come in a wide range of sizes that can bring humidity to a single room or an entire home, depending on its size.
Your local hardware store is a great place to find a portable humidifier to suit your needs.
2. Buy Houseplants
Transpiration is the process by which water moves through plants, and its final step is its evaporation into the atmosphere.
Houseplants have always been an aesthetic way of improving humidity levels in your home. Some houseplants that best increase humidity are:
- Dracaena
- Philodendron
- Peace lily
- Areca palm
- Bamboo palm
Take a trip to a nursery, plant store, or garden centre this weekend and pick up some houseplants!
3. Leave the bathroom door open
Specifically, leave the bathroom door open when you’re having a shower or a bath. You have to bathe anyway, so you might as well make use of the steamy winter showers you’re taking and add some humidity to your house.
Granted, this is a very temporary fix to a home’s humidity problems, but it does work in a pinch.
4. Install a humidifier on your furnace
The best way to combat low humidity in your home this winter is to have a humidifier fixed to your furnace. This way, when your HVAC system works to make your home a comfortable 20° Celsius (68° Fahrenheit), it also circulates the appropriate levels of humidity.
The air humidifier market is set to hit $2.8 billion by 2024 and one of the driving factors in the industry’s growth is that people are becoming aware of the negative health problems that are associated with low humidity environments.
Therm-All installs top of the line air quality products and systems that will improve your home’s air quality, reduce allergens, and keep you breathing easy. To get in touch with our team of professionals about humidifiers, contact us today.
