The Best Dehumidifiers for Drying Out Small Spaces, Tested by Home Experts
Bye-bye, weird smells and sweaty walls.
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When it comes to choosing the right dehumidifier for your home, size matters. If you want to control the humidity in a small space—which our experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab define as 600 square feet or less—models with capacities in the 25- to 35-pint range are your best bet. Larger units, besides costing more, will constantly cycle on and off as they dehumidify, reducing their efficiency and causing extra wear on the compressor.
Our top picks:
- Best overall: Frigidaire 35-Pint Dehumidifier
- Best value: TCL 32-Pint Dehumidifier
- Best for cold spaces: hOmeLabs 24-Pint Dehumidifier
During testing of 40 dehumidifiers over the last five years, our team looked for models that excelled at removing moisture from the air and holding humidity levels at the desired set point. “Many balance that performance with excellent energy efficiency and quiet operation,” says Data and Product Operations Manager Nikolas Greenwald, who ran most of our Lab tests. We also sent dehumidifiers into the homes of expert testers to evaluate performance, ease of use, and more in real-world conditions over the long haul. Here are the three best for small spaces.
Best Deal
Pros
- Performance exceeds its 35-pint capacity, making it effective in larger spaces.
- Front-facing water bucket has handles for easy emptying
- Easy to move from room to room
Cons
- High fan setting may be noisy in a small room
- No built-in 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 | 34 lbs |
| Dimensions | 11.1" x 14.7" x 19.8" |
| Drainage | Bucket or hose (no pump) |
| Fan speeds | High, medium, low |
Pros
- Quiet operation makes it a good choice for living spaces
- One of the most energy-efficient models on the market.
- Can be monitored and operated through the app
Cons
- Only has two fan speeds
Besides being a great bargain, this 32-pint dehumidifier from TCL runs quieter than other tested models. That makes it the best choice if you need to control humidity in multiple living spaces, such as a bedroom, family room, and home office. It's also one of the most energy-efficient models we tested, which matters for an appliance you may run for hours at a time.
Behind its Energy Star Most Efficient rating, the TCL also does a solid job pulling moisture from the air in small spaces, without being an energy hog. The TCL is one of the smartest dehumidifiers we reviewed, with Wi-Fi connectivity and a user-friendly app that lets you monitor and control the machine remotely. With only two fan speeds, you’ll have less control over airflow into the room.
| Capacity | 32 pt |
| Weight | 36.3 lbs |
| Dimensions | 8.3" x 12.2" x 19.7" |
| Drainage | Bucket or hose (no pump) |
| Fan speeds | High and low |
Pros
- Auto-defrost features means it won't conk out in cold basements
- Energy-efficient design means lower operating cost
Cons
- No built-in pump for elevated draining
This well-priced hOmeLabs dehumidifier does 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 can also add a hose to the back of the unit so it drains continuously. 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 | 24 pt |
| Weight | 22.3 lbs |
| Dimensions | 8.6" x 9.8" x 18.1" |
| Drainage | Bucket or hose (no pump) |
| Fan speeds | Normal, turbo |
How we test dehumidifiers
Product analysts and test engineers at the Good Housekeeping Institute Home Improvement & Outdoor Lab continuously monitor the dehumidifier marketplace nationwide to identify the models consumers are most likely to find in stores and online.
For this guide, we selected reliable brands to test 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 measure the loudness of each machine 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, the intuitiveness of the model's display and controls, 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 mock problem and noting how quickly the representative remedies it.
What to look for when shopping for the best dehumidifiers for small spaces
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 can 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, check 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 roundup 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 the air. Air from the room is drawn into the first heat exchanger by the fan, where it trades heat with the refrigerant. 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 air absorbs back the heat it produced in the process. 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?
Dan DiClerico has been testing and writing about dehumidifiers for more than 25 years. During that time, he has spearheaded numerous investigative reports on indoor air quality, working closely with outside experts from government, industry, and the home services space. As Director of Home Improvement & Outdoor, Dan 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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