When it comes to keeping your home in an ideal range, most people often think about temperature, but humidity levels are often overlooked. Generally, unless someone owns plants, humidity isn’t something that crosses most people’s minds.
However, having the right amount of humidity in your home can be important. Being in the ideal humidity range can reduce health issues and allergies, increase sleep quality, prevent mold and mildew, and even prevent dust mites. But what should the humidity be in your house? Find out below.
What Should the Humidity Be in Your House?
For the most part, somewhere between 30 percent and 60 percent is considered to be the best humidity. Every company and study suggests a slightly different percentage, but for the most part, you can expect to see it somewhere in this range.
For example, HVAC.com suggests that the ideal percentage is 40, while Mayo Clinic suggests around 30 percent. As long as you stay within this range, you should be fine, and you can leave it up to personal preference as to the exact amount of humidity you have.
Being in this range will benefit both your health and your home, so it is important to make sure you are in the right range. Generally, in the summer, you can have higher humidity, around 50 percent or 60 percent, while in winter, you may want to drop it down to 30 percent or 40 percent. Otherwise, you may feel yourself having to turn up the heat a lot to warm up.
It is important to remember that too much and too little humidity are both bad and can cause problems. Too little will often have your home feeling cold and leave you with dry, itchy skin or even nosebleeds. Too much humidity tends to cause mold and allergies.
Unfortunately, unless you have a very fancy home system or your home is pretty modern, you likely don’t have something to measure the humidity of your home. This can make it hard to tell if you are in an ideal range or not, though you can guess. There are tools for cheap that you can buy to keep track of the humidity in your home, such as a hygrometer.
You can also hazard a guess based on where you live. If you are in a dry state like Arizona, it’s very unlikely that your home is humid enough. If you live somewhere like Florida, you can safely assume that a dehumidifier will benefit you.
As far as changing the humidity, you may want to look at either dehumidifiers or humidifiers, depending on your needs. There are also products like swamp coolers which can make a room feel cooler and add some much-needed humidity.
It is also important to remember that, many times, the humidity levels between floors, and sometimes even rooms, will be different. So you may have to check each room to see if it needs more or less humidity.