You can humidify a room naturally by placing indoor plants, bowls of water, or wet towels around the room. You can also take advantage of activities that produce moisture, such as showering or boiling water on the stove.
Without having to spend a dime, you can increase your home's humidity by placing a metal or ceramic bowl of water on top of your floor registers or radiant heating unit. The water will evaporate into humid air. On a sunny day, place a bowl or vase filled with water on your windowsills.
Adding bowls of water around a room works kind of like a humidifier, but at a slower speed. Place a few bowls of water around the perimeter of the room you want to humidify and leave them there to allow the moisture to evaporate into the air.
During the winter, if you open the window when the outside air is colder than the air indoors, the cold air will come into contact with the warmer air and the level of humidity will fall automatically.
Hack a humidifier to fight the dehydration. Twitter user Aaron B suggests soaking a towel with water, wringing it tightly so that it's not dripping, then hanging it over an ironing board in front of your room's vent or heater.
On average, a tightly sealed home of 1,500 square feet should require a humidifier output of 3.2 gallons per day. An average home of the same size would need a humidifier output of 5.5 gallons per day, while a loose home would need 7.0 gallons per day.
Dry air inside your home is often caused by central heating and poor insulation isn't just a minor inconvenience. It can lead to mild to serious health effects you want to avoid for yourself and for your family.
While it may seem counterintuitive, it is actually helpful to open the windows and remove the stale, dry air from your house. Open windows during the daytime to let the fresh air in. It will help you breathe easy, and your skin won't feel that dry and itchy. Plus, it will also improve your home air quality.
When humidity levels are extremely low, you lose more water vapor through respiration and the pores in your skin. This can cause chronic dry skin, chapped lips, a scratchy throat, and an itchy nose.
Set your thermostat to 65 degrees at night to keep comfortable. If you're still having humidity sleep problems, consider putting a humidifier in your bedroom. A humidifier can help with the moisture content in the air and create the perfect environment for sleeping.
Most people enjoy the cooling and comfortable breeze of a fan. But excess wind makes the air dry. When you sleep, this dry air may affect your breathing, causing sleep disruptions. Using a fan at night can even aggravate your allergies, making you uncomfortable throughout the night.
Put the Kettle On
Boiling water on the stove will instantly release moisture in the air. This is a low-cost way to add warmth and humidity to your home. Instead of heating water in a microwave for tea or hot cocoa, use a kettle on the stove instead.
Place Bowls of Water on Registers
This is probably the most effective of these humidity-boosting tips. Place metal or ceramic bowls full of water on heat registers or radiators to push humidity into the air. You may be surprised by how much water is released during cold months when the furnace is going full tilt.
For an effective DIY way to add moisture to the air in your home, turn to your stove. By heating a kettle of water or boiling a pot of water for pasta, you're causing evaporation. As the water evaporates, it turns into vapor and mixes freely with the air in your home.
The short answer is yes: it is healthy to sleep with a humidifier in your room. Sleeping with a humidifier can have several health benefits, even if you don't have asthma.
Breathing dry air can cause respiratory ailments such as asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis and nosebleeds. Breathing dry air also can cause dehydration since body fluids are depleted during respiration. “Your sinuses will dry out,” says family medicine physician Daniel Allan, MD.
Place two or three ice cubes into a glass, add water and stir. Wait three to four minutes. If moisture does not form on the outside of the glass, the air is too dry; you may need a humidifier. If water has condensed on the outside of the glass, the level of relative humidity is high.
Opening the windows would only be allowing humid air into the room. You should also keep the windows closed when there is cold weather or if it is raining but the exception to this is if you are having a hot shower or cooking then your windows should be open.
If the humidity level outside is much above 65%, you are usually much better off keeping your windows closed at night and using your AC instead. The reason is that opening your windows allows all of that humid air to get inside the house and soak into your furnishings.
Keeping humidity out
One of the best ways to keep humidity from entering your home in the summer is to keep the doors and windows tightly closed. You don't want to waste energy cooling the entire neighborhood, so when your AC is running you should always have all windows and doors in the house closed.