Adequately heating your home can help to reduce condensation and damp, so keep temperature levels consistent, especially in those rooms that you may not use often. A heating thermostat can be useful for this. Avoid using paraffin heaters as these tend to create excess moisture.
Increasing the temperature in your room, particularly overnight and in the winter, will prevent the build-up of condensation on your windows and walls.
Heat your home
The warmer air is, the more moisture it will hold. Heating one room to a high level and leaving other rooms cold makes condensation worse in the unheated rooms. If you don't want to heat your entire home, keep the doors shut on unheated rooms.
Keep your home at a constant temperature
This prevents areas of cold, which is where the condensation is most likely to occur. In cold weather, set your central heating to provide a constant background heat throughout the day, even when there is nobody home and in rooms which are not used.
If a house is not heated on a chilly day, then the amount of moisture the air can hold will fall. At 10C, water can hold around half of the amount, and the rest of the water vapour produced will form as condensation.
Winter is often the time when you experience damp conditions in your home. Condensation is caused by warm moist air coming into contact with cold surfaces such as windows and walls. It happens mainly during the colder months, regardless of whether the weather is wet or dry.
Warm air holds more moisture than cold air. The warmer it is, the more moisture it can hold. Heating one room, and leaving the others cold, will lead to more condensation forming in the cold rooms. If you have central heating with radiators in every room, it is best to have a medium level of heat throughout your home.
The World Health Organisation guidelines suggest 21 degrees in a living room and 18 degrees in the bedrooms, falling lower at night and when you are out. You don't need to keep your home at these temperatures all the time, but you should aim to bring it up to these temperatures at least some of the day.
He explained that keeping your heating between 15 and 17 degrees helps your home reach a "constant temperature" which stops water forming on the windows. This trick also helps to slash energy bills, as it helps your home stay at a more manageable temperature rather than going between being too hot and too cold.
Will the humidity rise if the heat is turned up? Contrary to popular belief, heating the air actually lowers the relative humidity. This is because, as the temperature of the air increases, the air can hold more molecules, and its relative humidity goes down. The warmer the air, the greater its capacity to hold water.
Warm air indoors can hold more than cold air and so the risk of significant condensation is increased. Modern homes are significant producers of water vapour. An average family of four through activities like washing, cooking and drying clothes can produce as much as 4 or 5 gallons every 24 hours.
At night, almost all year round, the difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures means that condensation is always a possibility. In Britain, night-time temperatures usually fall below the dew point from the start of autumn through to late spring.
A little condensation on the inside or outside of your window isn't a major cause of concern. Wipe it away when you see it, and take steps to reduce the humidity in your house during the winter. And if there's a little condensation on your windows in the morning – don't worry.
To stop condensation forming on the walls in your bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom, you should: Open your windows to allow air to circulate more freely. Open the trickle vents on your windows at night and keep bedroom doors open.
Open your bedroom window trickle vents if you have them. Put your windows on the night vent facility keeping your home secure whilst still allowing airflow. (Especially if windows are behind a thick curtain/blackout blind or above a radiator etc.) Keep internal doors open (when not showering/cooking).
If seeing droplets on windows around the house has left you scratching your head, it's worth knowing exactly what causes condensation. You're most likely to see this common problem in winter. This tells us that condensation is caused by the difference in the air temperature inside your home and the outside environment.
The main cause of condensation is a lack of ventilation. The remedy is to improve ventilation to help equalise humidity inside and outside a property. Once upon a time, houses had badly-fitted windows, doors, chimneys and air vents that allowed for the circulation of air.
The cold air from the fans will still be warmer than that of the glass, and will help to dry it out - then you can start to turn up the heat. Alternatively, if you've got air conditioning, put this one as it will also help to dry the air out more quickly.
While damp cannot be reduced by opening windows, it can help to reduce the humidity levels in your property to make sure that condensation is not a common occurrence.
Increase ventilation
Ventilation can stop moisture being trapped and leading to condensation in your house. There are a few ways you can increase ventilation. Choose windows with 'trickle vents' or have vents fitted to your existing windows. These vents naturally allow air to transfer outdoors.
Low internal room temperatures can also create cold surfaces (particularly on windows and exterior walls) which allows warm air to condense onto them easily. Condensation occurs when warm air collides with cold surfaces, or when there's too much humidity in your home.
As we tend to keep bedrooms a little cooler than the rest of the house and turn off heating overnight, the surface of the windows will be colder. The moisture in the air will condense into water as it hits the cool surface of the windows, creating condensation on the inside of your bedroom window.