Benefits of Using a Humidifier

by Hannah Edmonds writer and editor

If you live in an area where the climate is cold and dry, it will be necessary for you to utilize a humidifier to purify indoor air and maintain humidity in your home within a desirable range. Humidifiers prevent the buildup of static electricity around the house, the onset of common cold-weather ailments, airborne viruses, as well as other allergens that may have detrimental effects on your health and wellness. They also help relieve dry skin and keep your skin from drying out.

If you’re open to acquiring a humidifier to improve the quality of indoor air in your home, we’ve highlighted some benefits that you can expect to derive like the ones above and even more.

1. Reduces Your Exposure to Airborne Diseases and Harmful Pathogens

Humidifiers are invaluable tools that can help prevent the spread of airborne diseases. A study found that flu germs survive and spread more easily in low-humidity conditions. As a result, increasing the humidity levels in your home may reduce the effects of low humidity on your health. The ideal in-home humidity levels should be between 40 percent and 60 percent. Anything under 40% is considered too dry; while over 60% is considered too high.

According to DailySleep, when your in-home humidity is below 40 percent, it can increase your chances of getting a cold and may cause you to experience itchy eyes, dry skin, and irritated throat and nasal passages. On the other hand, in-home humidity higher than 60% increases the risk of mold and fungal growth, which are likely to cause health problems too.

2. Prevents Dry Skin

A humidifier restore the humidity level in your home, thereby improving symptoms such as dry skin. In addition to making your skin healthy and hydrated, humidifiers alleviate other symptoms such as frequent coughs, irritated eyes, bloody noses, and sinus headaches.

3. Protects Your Belongings

Aside from affecting your skin, lips, and triggering respiratory symptoms, dry air can cause severe damage to your personal belongings. Your furniture and electrical appliances can get damaged if they’re deprived of moisture. For instance, dry air can cause your wood furniture to dry out and shrink, leading to the widening of cabinet joints, gaps in door frames, gaps between floorboards, and warping of wood panels.

Others issues include the evaporation of furniture adhesives, as well as the loosening of chair and table legs. A humidifier keeps your wooden furniture from becoming dehydrated by maintaining a constant relative humidity level in your home.

Dry air can also make your piano go out of tune. Pianos are extremely sensitive to atmospheric changes because the soundboard is made of wood. As the air in your room becomes much drier, the wood dries out, causing the soundboard to shrink. This reduces the tension in the strings, which in turn, causes the pitch to drop. Increasing the humidity in your home by using a humidifier will help lessen this problem.

4. Humidifiers prevent static shocks

Low humidity isn’t just bad for your health, furniture, or piano. It’s also bad for your electrical appliances and computers, which are susceptible to damage from static electricity. Static electricity is the buildup of electric charges on an object through frictional contact between two materials that are both insulators.

As electrons on the surface of one material rub off onto the surface of another, one object will lose electrons and have a positive charge, while the other object will gain electrons and have a negative charge. If one of the materials has a high resistance to electrical current, then the charged electrons will remain attached to the surface until they're discharged. So if you touch a conductor, such as a metal doorknob, the charge will release itself.

This often occurs either slowly or suddenly, depending on the amount of electrical resistance in the air, which in turn, depends on the amount of moisture in the air. Static shock occurs when there is static electricity, and dry air tends to increase the chances of a shock. Adding humidity through a humidifier reduces this risk.

5. Reduce Snoring

Dry air makes snoring worse due to the lack of a sufficient amount of moisture in the air. A humidifier helps to relieve this symptom by adding humidity to the air. Also, using a humidifier may help your throat to stay moist, preventing the allergies that trigger nasal congestion.

6. Improve hair

Dry indoor hair can affect your hair too. As with your skin and eyes, low humidity draws water and moisture from your hair and scalp. As the dry indoor hair sucks out all the moisture from your scalp, your scalp becomes dry, leading to dry hair. Dry hair results in breakage, causing your hair to fall. Using a humidifier in your home helps to add moisture that prevents your hair from drying out and becoming prone to breakage.

Things to Consider When Buying a Humidifier

Now that you know how vital a humidifier can be for your health, appliances, and furniture, it’s safe to assume you would want to get one for your home to protect yourself and your family. However, there are things that you need to bear in mind when looking for the ideal humidifier.

The search for the best humidifier often narrows down to one between a warm-mist or cool-mist option. Cool-mist humidifiers are designed to make a room feel cooler and moisture-rich. Warm-mist humidifiers, on the other hand, work by releasing hot steam into your space to improve humidity. However, the steam can burn your kids or pets. For this reason, most homeowners often prefer cool-mist humidifiers in order to be on the safer side.

Also, you may want to consider humidifiers with a humidistat. The humidistat is crucial as it monitors moisture levels and adjusts their output to ensure humidity is within the recommended level.