4 Best Small Dehumidifiers to Reduce Dampness
Get rid of mildew and musty smells from confined areas of your home with our top-tested picks.
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned through more than 20 years of testing dehumidifiers, it’s that size matters. Matching the dehumidifier to the square footage of the space it will live in is crucial to achieving optimal performance. It will also stop you from spending more than you need to on a dehumidifier that’s too big for a smaller space, like a bathroom, dorm room or basement home office.
Over the past three years, I’ve led the testing of more than 25 dehumidifiers in the Home Improvement and Outdoor Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute (along with other home comfort equipment, like air purifiers and portable ACs). My testing partners and I look for models that are best at removing moisture from the air and holding humidity levels steady at the desired set point. "Many balance that performance with excellent energy efficiency and quiet operation," says Nikolas Greenwald, data engineer at the Good Housekeeping Institute, who tested many of the models we considered in our Lab. We also send dehumidifiers into the homes of expert testers, who help evaluate usability, convenience features, noise levels and more.
If you’re looking to control the humidity in a small space — which our engineers define as 600 square feet or less — one of the four models featured here will do an excellent job.
Pros
- Portable
- Works fast
- Front-facing water bucket has handles for easy emptying
Cons
- High fan setting may be noisy in a small room
- No pump for elevated draining
Fast, effective moisture removal catapulted Frigidaire's 35-pint dehumidifier to the top of the winner's list in our latest Lab test. I'm even comfortable recommending this unit for larger spaces, say, up to 1,000 square feet, provided they're only moderately dank (no standing water on the floors or condensation on the walls).
Consumer testers applauded the bevy of simple, helpful features that made the Frigidaire easy to use. The front-facing reservoir bucket is very accessible and the built-in carrying handle makes it easy to tote it to the nearest sink (or use the captured water to give houseplants a drink!). I like that the unit comes with a hose for continual draining, though there's no onboard pump, so wherever you're sending the water has to be lower than the unit.
One caveat: If you're planning to run this dehumidifier in a bedroom, dorm room, or small apartment, the high fan setting is quite noisy.
Capacity: 35 pt | Weight: 40 lbs | Dimensions: 15.97" x 12.19" x 24.25" | Drainage: Bucket or hose (no pump) | Noise level at highest fan setting: 45 dB | Fan speeds: High, medium, low | Energy Star certification: Yes
Pros
- Superb water removal
- Quiet operation
- Energy efficient
Cons
- Bulky design
If you're dealing with a mid-size area between 600 and 1,000 square feet that gets damp, but not wet, this well-priced, medium-capacity unit is a solid option. Spaces smaller than that that do get wet, like a bathroom that doesn't have an exhaust fan, can also be easily tackled by this unit.
This energy-efficient unit runs quietly, noted Greenwald. That makes the Midea a great fit for common areas of the home, like a family room, since you won't have to contend with a loud, constant humming.
A filter cleaning alert signal tells you when it's time to wash the reusable filter. Another smart feature I like is the auto-restart, which is helpful in the event of a power outage. Just keep in mind that at 33 pounds and 25 inches tall, this unit might be bulky for truly tight spaces, like a dorm room or a shoebox studio apartment.
Capacity: 35 pt | Weight: 33.51 lbs | Dimensions: 11.54" x 15.94" x 24.29" | Drainage: Bucket or hose (no pump) | Noise level at highest fan setting: 54 dB | Fan speeds: High (turbo), low | Energy Star certification: Yes
Pros
- Carries the Energy Star label
- Wi-Fi-connected for remote operation
Cons
- Capacity not fit for larger, damp spaces
Since dehumidifiers are often running nonstop, it's important to look for a model that consumes as little electricity as possible. That's what I like about this Energy Star-qualified unit from TCL. It does a solid job pulling moisture from the air in small spaces, without being an energy hog. But its 25-pint capacity will limit its performance in larger spaces or smaller ones with extreme humidity.
The TCL is one of the smartest dehumidifiers we reviewed, including Wi-Fi-connectivity and a user-friendly app that allows you to monitor and control the machine remotely. The auto-defrost feature makes this dehumidifier suitable for use in basements and other locations where the temperature gets down to 41° F.
Capacity: 25 pt | Weight: 36.3 lbs | Dimensions: 14.37" x 9.84" x 19.69" | Drainage: Bucket or hose (no pump) | Noise level at highest fan setting: Not listed | Fan speeds: High and low | Energy Star certification: Yes
Pros
- Has a defrost function
- Energy Star-certified
- Option to continuously drain
Cons
- No pump for elevated draining
Based on years of experience testing HomeLabs dehumidifiers, I expect this model to do a capable job of removing moisture from the air in small- to mid-size spaces. Its simple, user-friendly design features a front-facing water tank that pulls out like a drawer for easy drainage.
You also have the option of adding the hose to the back of the unit so it will continuously drain. However, there is no pump for elevated draining.
If your home is cold and damp, this unit has a defrost feature to help keep ice crystals from forming on the coils, which can damage the machine. It's the smallest of our picks too, so it's a great option if you're working with a tight space, like a basement bathroom or home office.
Capacity: 22 pt | Weight: 30.5 lbs | Dimensions: 15.2" x 10.2" x 19.7" | Drainage: Bucket or hose (no pump) | Noise level at highest fan setting: Not listed | Fan speeds: High (turbo), low | Energy Star certification: Yes
How we test
Product analysts and test engineers at the Good Housekeeping Institute Home Improvement and Outdoor Lab continuously keep tabs on the dehumidifier marketplace nationwide to identify the models that consumers are most likely to find in stores and online.
For this guide, we singled out reliable brands for testing across the smallest size category. Hands-on testing began in our Lab under controlled humidity and temperature conditions.
The key performance-based test measures how much water each dehumidifier collects in a 48-hour time period (pictured).
Our engineers also use a decibel meter to determine how loud each machine is when running at its highest fan speed (pictured). Usability is another important part of our evaluation; it happens in the Lab, as well as in the homes of consumer testers, allowing us to test basement dehumidifiers under real-world conditions.
Our pros also assess factors such as portability, how intuitive the model's display and controls are and ease of cleaning, including how simple it is to wash the dehumidifier's filter and empty the water reservoir. Finally, we evaluate each brand's customer service by contacting their helplines with a pretend problem and taking note of how quickly it is remedied by the representative.
What to look for when shopping
To find the best dehumidifier for your small space, keep the following factors in mind:
✔️ Size: Generally, the bigger the unit, the more pints of moisture it can remove from the air in a day. This gets tricky when you have a small area with serious humidity. In that scenario, shoot for a model designed for medium-sized rooms so it has the power to pull all that moisture from the air without taking up a huge amount of floor space.
✔️ Noise: You might not need to consider this if you plan on placing the unit in a basement or other room you're not in that often, but if you want to put it in your bedroom or dorm room, consider how loud the machine gets. Below 50 decibels is ideal; anything above 60 decibels could be a nuisance at night.
✔️ Hoses and pumps: Depending on how you want to empty the unit, you need to look for how the system drains. If you have a way to drain it to a place lower than the unit (say, a floor drain), then you can get away with just a hose. If you want it to drain to something like a sink though, you'll need a pump to push the water. Our round-up of best full-size dehumidifiers includes options with onboard pumps.
How does a dehumidifier work?
Dehumidifiers use a system of two heat exchangers and a condenser to pull moisture from air. Air from the room is pulled into the first heat exchanger by the fan and trades heat for a refrigerant in the heat exchanger. This process causes the air to drop below its dew point (the temperature at which condensation starts to form). The resulting condensation is then deposited into the dehumidifier's tank.
The evaporated coolant flows into a condenser where it's returned to its liquid form and the heat it produced in the process is absorbed back by the air. This way, cold air isn't coming off the dehumidifier. The air that leaves a dehumidifier will always be slightly hotter than the air that enters.
Why trust Good Housekeeping?
I've been testing and writing about dehumidifiers for 25 years. In that time, I've spearheaded numerous investigative reports on the topic of indoor air quality, working closely with outside experts from government, industry and the home services space. As Director of Home Improvement and Outdoor at the Good Housekeeping Institute, I oversaw the latest round of dehumidifier testing in our Labs, as well as the continuous in-home, survey-based consumer testing that allows us to evaluate these devices in real-world conditions.
Nikolas Greenwald led our latest round of dehumidifier testing. Greenwald works with all of our Labs to develop testing protocols and manage data collection and analysis. Before joining Good Housekeeping in 2022, Greenwald worked in the labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, working on projects ranging from chemical inventory and reporting to the development of bioassays. He holds a degree in chemical engineering from Northeastern University.
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