Best dehumidifiers UK 2026: our picks and how to choose

The best dehumidifier for most UK homes is a 10 to 12 litre compressor model with a built-in humidistat, and our pick is the MeacoDry Arete Two 12L. It's quiet enough for a bedroom, costs about 3.6p an hour to run at the current price cap, and comes with a five-year warranty. The older Arete One 12L does the same core job for a little less money if you can live without the app.

For a cold room, a garage, or drying washing quickly, a desiccant model such as the Meaco DD8L Pro is the better tool, though it costs more to run.

Winter is when British homes get damp: streaming windows first thing, and washing that takes two days to dry on the airer. We're an air conditioning site, so why dehumidifiers? Because keeping your home comfortable all year means dealing with heat in summer and moisture in winter, and for the winter half a dehumidifier is usually the right tool rather than air con. Our guide on whether a dehumidifier cools a room explains where each one fits.

Our picks at a glance

Running costs use 26.32p per kWh, the Ofgem price cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026, and each model's power draw at 20°C and 60% humidity. Prices checked 5 November 2026; they move quickly around Black Friday.

Best overall: MeacoDry Arete Two 12L

The Arete Two is the dehumidifier we'd put in most homes. It's a compressor model sized for a flat or a one to three bedroom house, and in a typical heated room at 20°C it pulls out about 5.4 litres of water a day while drawing just 136 W. That's about 3.6p an hour, or 29p for an eight-hour stint.

It's also properly quiet. It starts from 35 dB on its lowest fan and carries the Quiet Mark, so you can run it in a bedroom on night mode. The display shows the room's current humidity next to your target, which takes the guesswork out of whether it's working, and the Meaco app (plus Alexa and Google) lets you set schedules and check the reading from your phone. There's a third, faster fan speed and an adjustable laundry timer, so it dries washing noticeably better than the Arete One.

The catches are modest. The app gets the job done, but scheduling is buried and a few functions aren't obvious. At 10.9 kg it's heavier than it looks, and as with every compressor model it loses most of its punch in a cold room: about 2 litres a day at 10°C. The 12L also sells out in a cold snap, so check stock as well as price.

For a four bedroom house, or a family drying most of its washing indoors, step up to the Arete Two 20L. It removes about 8.5 litres a day at 20°C for 207 W (about 5.4p an hour), with a bigger 4.8 litre tank, although it weighs 15.1 kg and the compressor hum is more noticeable. Read our full Arete Two review for the detail.

Best value: MeacoDry Arete One 12L

The Arete One is the model the Arete Two replaced, and it's still one of the best buys around. It's a Which? Best Buy and Quiet Mark approved, starts from 35 dB, includes a HEPA filter, and carries the same five-year warranty. At 151 W in a 20°C room it costs about 4p an hour, so the running cost gap to the Arete Two is tiny.

What you give up is convenience. The 10L and 12L versions have no app and no timer, there are two fan speeds rather than three, and the laundry mode is weaker: a six-hour run can leave thicker clothes slightly damp. If you mainly want to keep condensation and damp in check in a heated home, none of that matters much, and you save around £15 to £20. If you dry washing indoors most days, the extra for the Arete Two is money well spent.

There's also a 6L compact version for a single bedroom or a small flat, and 20L and 25L models for bigger homes. Our Arete One review covers which size suits which home.

Best for cold rooms and laundry: Meaco DD8L Pro

The DD8L Pro is a desiccant dehumidifier, which makes it the right choice for the jobs a compressor model struggles with. It works from 1°C, so it suits an unheated spare room, a garage, a conservatory, or a cold utility room where you dry washing. Its output barely drops in the cold: about 8 litres a day at 20°C on its top fan and still about 6.9 litres at 10°C, where a compressor model of similar size manages 2 or 3.

It also puts out warm, dry air, about 10 to 12°C warmer than the air going in, which takes the chill off a cold room and speeds up laundry drying. It's a Which? Best Buy, it has an app with Alexa and Google support, a 1 to 24 hour timer, and an automatic louvre you can aim at the airer.

The trade-off is cost and noise. It draws 231 W on low and around 623 W on its top fan, so expect 6.1p to 16.4p an hour. It's loud on that top setting, the 2 litre tank needs emptying during a big laundry session, castors cost extra, and the warranty is three years rather than five. In a warm, heated room a compressor model does the same job for far less. Our DD8L Pro review also compares it with the cheaper DD8L, Junior and Zambezi.

Compressor or desiccant: which type do you need?

This is the decision that matters most, and it comes down to how warm the room is.

A compressor dehumidifier (sometimes called a refrigerant model) pulls air over a cold coil so the moisture condenses into the tank, much as your breath fogs a cold window. A desiccant dehumidifier soaks the moisture up with an absorbent wheel, then uses a small heater to dry the wheel out again.

Meaco, which makes both types, gives a simple rule of thumb. Below 10°C, buy a desiccant. Between 10 and 15°C, buy a desiccant or a large 20 to 25 litre compressor model. Above 15°C, any compressor model will do the job. Most heated living rooms and bedrooms sit above 15°C in winter, which is why a compressor model is the right buy for most homes. A desiccant earns its higher running cost in a room you don't heat, and its warm air can even let you turn the heating down in that room.

What size dehumidifier do I need?

Dehumidifiers are sized in litres a day: the amount of water they can remove, not the size of the tank. The catch is that the headline figure is measured at 30°C and 80% humidity, which is closer to a tropical bathroom than a British home in January.

The Arete One 20L shows the gap. It's sold as a 20 litre machine, but in a 20°C room at 60% humidity it removes about 8.5 litres a day, and at 10°C about 3.4 litres. So treat the number on the box as a way to compare models, not a promise, and size up if your home runs cool.

Meaco's sizing table is a sensible starting point:

Laundry changes the answer. A 12 litre model is fine for one person with light washing; for a family of three or four drying clothes indoors most days, a 20 litre model is the better fit, and a 25 litre suits bigger households. If you're not sure how damp your home is, a cheap hygrometer will tell you within a day.

What humidity should you set it to?

Aim for 50 to 55%. There's no benefit in drying a home below 50%, and a lower target just burns electricity. That sits comfortably inside the 40 to 60% range we recommend in our guide to the ideal humidity in a house.

The humidistat does the rest: it switches the dehumidifier on above your target and off once it gets there, which is also why real running costs come in below the flat-out figures below.

How much does a dehumidifier cost to run?

A good compressor dehumidifier costs about 4p to 6p an hour to run, and a desiccant about 6p to 16p, at the October to December 2026 price cap of 26.32p per kWh. The sum is simple: power in kW × hours × 26.32p.

Those figures assume the dehumidifier runs flat out the whole time. In practice the humidistat switches it off once the room reaches your target, so most homes spend less. For context, Which?'s Best Buys average about 7p an hour, and the least efficient models it has tested cost around 17p, so all three of our picks sit at the frugal end on their normal settings.

You can also try different hours and models in our full running cost calculator.

Rates correct as of November 2026. The energy price cap changes quarterly, so check the current rate before budgeting.

Are dehumidifiers noisy?

The quiet ones are quiet enough for a bedroom. The Arete One and Arete Two 10L and 12L models start from 35 dB on their lowest fan, and both carry the Quiet Mark. Bigger 20L and 25L compressor models hum noticeably when the compressor runs, much as a fridge does, laundry mode is the loudest setting on any model, and desiccants are loud on their top fan.

If you want to run one overnight, use night mode, or put it on the landing with the bedroom doors open so it treats the upstairs without sitting next to your pillow.

Drying laundry with a dehumidifier

A dehumidifier won't match a tumble dryer for speed, but it makes indoor drying far quicker and stops all that water ending up on your windows and walls. In a Which? test it almost halved the drying time of a load and pulled about 2 litres of water out of the room.

On cost, it depends what you're comparing with. A six-hour laundry run on an Arete Two 12L costs about 22p, and a DD8L Pro on its top fan about 98p. Which? puts a heat pump tumble dryer at about 35p a load and a condenser dryer at about 89p, so if you already own a heat pump dryer, it's the cheaper way to dry. Against drying on radiators, which pushes moisture straight into the room and onto cold glass, a dehumidifier wins easily.

To get the best from it:

• Use a small room with the door shut, rather than an open-plan space.

• Give the load an extra spin first.

• Put the dehumidifier close to the airer, but not where clothes can drip on it, and a fan on the other side helps.

• Keep most models about 20cm from the wall; the Arete One range is designed to sit flat against one.

For the fastest results in a cold utility room, a desiccant model is the one to buy. In a heated room, the Arete Two 20L or 25L dries well for less.

Will a dehumidifier stop condensation and mould?

It helps a lot, as long as you also deal with the cause. Condensation forms when moisture from showers, cooking and drying washing meets cold glass and walls, and government guidance on damp and mould puts ventilation first: trickle vents open, extractor fans that work, and internal doors shut while you cook or shower. A dehumidifier then mops up what's left, which is why a compressor model running for a few pennies an hour is one of the best-value fixes for streaming windows.

What it won't fix is damp from a leak, a failed gutter or rising damp. If a patch keeps coming back in the same place, get the building looked at. Our guide on how to stop condensation on windows runs through the fixes in order of cost.

Dehumidifier or air conditioning?

They do different jobs, and plenty of households sensibly own both. A dehumidifier is the tool for winter damp, condensation and laundry; it adds a little heat rather than taking it away. Air con is the tool for summer heat, and it dries the air as it cools. Its dry mode is handy in a muggy August, but in a cold January room it's no substitute for a dehumidifier. A reverse-cycle split that heats in winter won't dry the air while heating, though warmer rooms and surfaces do mean less condensation.

Why our picks are all Meaco

We've started our dehumidifier reviews with Meaco because it's the UK specialist with the widest range of both compressor and desiccant models, and because it publishes how much water each model removes at 10°C and 20°C rather than just the flattering 30°C headline. That lets us compare like for like on running costs and cold-room performance. We'll add other brands as we review them. Our reviews are independent, and if you buy through a link on this page we may earn a commission, which never changes our verdicts. See our affiliate disclosure for how that works.