A heated airer cannot dry a load of washing for less than about 32p at the October price cap. Not a 202W one, not a 1,800W one, not one with a cover. That figure is set by the water in your laundry, and no amount of low-energy branding moves it. What the wattage changes is how long you wait, and we read 49 listings on 20 September 2026 to find out how many sellers explain that. Twelve quote a running cost. All twelve quote it per hour. Three say how many hours.
Key findings, 20 September 2026
- The evaporation floor is 1.22 kWh, or 32p a load at the October cap. That is the energy the water needs, and nothing that dries by evaporation beats it.
- Watts set the speed, not the price. 220W for eight hours and 1,800W for one hour cost the same, because they deliver the same energy.
- Of 49 heated airers on Amazon UK, 16 publish no wattage at all. Six of those still quote a price per hour, so there is no way to check it.
- One listing in 49 states the electricity rate behind its cost claim. That rate is 20p, below the 26.32p cap, so even the honest one is about a quarter light.
- A realistic covered airer costs about 48p a load, or £126 a year at five loads a week. An open rack in a cold room runs to 81p, which is more than a heat pump tumble dryer.
Checked 20 September 2026 – desk research by Jacob Whitmore. We have not handled any of these airers and we do not test. Every wattage below is the seller’s own published figure, read from the listing on the date above, and every cost is arithmetic on the Ofgem cap. Where a listing publishes no wattage we say so and rank it nowhere. If you buy through the Amazon links we may earn a commission; it does not change your price, and nobody has paid to appear here. See how we make money and our methodology.
Prices and specs last checked 20 September 2026 · how we picked
The short answer
Buy on drying space, cover and build, and accept that the running cost is much the same whatever you choose. For the cheapest way in, the Harbour Housewares 18-rail at £32.99 does the job. If you want a three-tier that will last and hold two wash loads, the Addis Superdry+ at £160 includes the cover that the Lakeland Dry:Soon at £159.99 leaves out. If you need clothes dry by morning and not by evening, a 1,000W pod such as the Dry:Soon Drying Pod at £64.99 gets there in a fraction of the time for about the same money per load. What you should not do is pay extra for a low wattage and expect a lower bill.
Why per hour is the wrong number
Every cost claim we found is a price per hour, which is the number that flatters a heated airer. A 220W rack really does cost 5.8p an hour at the cap. A condenser tumble dryer really does cost about 92p a cycle. Side by side, the airer looks like a rounding error.
The trouble is that the tumble dryer has finished and the airer has not. Pence per hour prices the appliance; it does not price the job. Pricing the job needs two numbers, the wattage and the hours. Sellers publish the first two times in three and the second three times in 49. We call the missing figure the unsourced hour: the variable that decides every running-cost claim in the category, and almost nobody states it.
The evaporation floor
There is a way round the missing hours, and it comes from the laundry instead of the marketing. Evaporation takes a fixed amount of energy per kilogram of water, so if you know how much water leaves the machine you know the least energy the job can take. We call that number the evaporation floor.
How much water your machine leaves behind is defined in UK law. The energy labelling regulation grades spin performance by remaining moisture content, as a percentage of the dry weight of the load: class A is under 45 per cent, class B is 45 to 54, class C is 54 to 63. Most UK machines sit in B or C. We use the middle of class C, 58 per cent, on a 3kg dry load of cottons, which is what a household actually washes; the 8kg or 9kg on the machine is a rated capacity, not a habit.
| Step | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Dry load | 3.0 kg | Our assumption: a normal wash, not a rated capacity |
| Water left after spin | 58% of dry weight = 1.74 kg | Spin class C midpoint, Regulation 2019/2014 Annex II |
| Energy per kg of water | 0.70 kWh | Latent heat of vaporisation plus warming the water |
| Evaporation floor | 1.22 kWh | 1.74 x 0.70 |
| Floor in money | 32p a load | 1.22 x 26.32p |
Nothing that dries by evaporating water into your house can go below that, whether it draws 202W or 1,800W. One appliance gets close: a heat pump tumble dryer, which recovers the heat it puts in instead of sending it out of the room. That is why heat pump models use around 2 kWh where a condenser uses 3.5 kWh.
What you actually pay
Real airers land above the floor, because much of the heat they make warms the room instead of the washing. A cover holds warm air around the clothes and closes some of that gap; an open rack in an unheated back bedroom loses most of it. Nobody publishes the efficiency of a heated airer, so instead of inventing one we have priced the whole range.
| How well it holds the heat | Energy per load | Cost per load | A year at 5 loads a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| The floor, 100% efficient (not achievable) | 1.22 kWh | 32p | £84 |
| Good: covered airer, warm room | 1.84 kWh | 48p | £126 |
| Typical | 2.45 kWh | 64p | £168 |
| Poor: open rack, cold room | 3.06 kWh | 81p | £210 |
| Heat pump tumble dryer, for comparison | 2.0 kWh | 53p | £137 |
| Condenser tumble dryer, for comparison | 3.5 kWh | 92p | £239 |
That table is the argument of this page. A covered airer in a warm room beats a condenser dryer comfortably and a heat pump dryer slightly. The same airer uncovered in a cold room loses to a heat pump dryer and sits within a few pence of a condenser. The airer is not automatically the cheap option; the room decides. The wattage decides only the clock: divide the floor by the power and you get the fastest the machine could possibly work, before any losses.
The picks
Seven airers, all on Amazon UK, all in stock and priced on 20 September 2026, all publishing their own wattage. Grouped by what they are for, because the running cost does not separate them.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (paid link)
The live table above pulls six of our seven picks from Amazon’s product feed and re-prices itself. The Addis Superdry+ is missing from it because that listing is not carried in the feed we can read, so its price sits in our own table below and was read from the buy box by hand on 20 September 2026.
| Airer | Power | Price | p per hour | Hours to the floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harbour Housewares 18-rail | 220W | £32.99 | 5.8p | 5.6 |
| Tower Heated Winged with cover | 230W | £42.99 | 6.1p | 5.3 |
| Duronic CA20 3-tier | 202W | £79.99 | 5.3p | 6.1 |
| Duronic CA30 3-tier | 300W | £99.99 | 7.9p | 4.1 |
| Lakeland Dry:Soon 3-Tier | 300W | £159.99 | 7.9p | 4.1 |
| Addis Superdry+ with cover | 300W | £160.00 | 7.9p | 4.1 |
| Dry:Soon Heated Drying Pod | 1,000W | £64.99 | 26.3p | 1.2 |
Harbour Housewares Electric Heated Clothes Airer, 220W
£32.99. Eighteen rails on a flat-folding aluminium frame, and the cheapest airer here by a distance. It states 220W and claims “as little as 5p per hour”, one of the few claims in our audit you can check: at the October cap the true figure is 5.8p. A shade optimistic, but it published the wattage, which puts it ahead of most of the category.
The catch: no cover in the box, and the cover is what decides whether you sit at 48p a load or 81p. Budget for one. A single tier also means a smaller load than the three-tier models, so a big wash becomes two sessions.
See it on AmazonTower Heated Winged Clothes Airer with Thermal Cover, 230W
£42.99. The cover is included, which is the single change that moves you down the cost table, and 12.6m of space with a 15kg limit covers an ordinary wash. Tower publishes the wattage and makes no numerical cost claim: the listing says drying costs “a fraction” of a tumble dryer, which our table supports.
The catch: winged airers spread washing wide and low, so a 15kg rating describes what the frame can hold before it bends, which has little to do with airflow. Overload it and the middle of the pile stays damp long after the edges are dry, which is how a 48p load quietly becomes an 81p one.
See it on AmazonDuronic CA30 BK 3-Tier Heated Clothes Airer, 300W
£99.99. Thirty-six heated bars across three folding tiers, a 30kg frame rating, folds to 15.5cm, six pegs included. It earns its place for something none of the other 48 listings did: it states the electricity rate its cost claim rests on, quoting around 6p an hour on a 20p tariff. That is checkable, which makes it the only running-cost claim in the category worth the pixels.
The catch: 20p is not what you pay. At the October cap of 26.32p the real figure is 7.9p an hour, so the listing is about a quarter light through no fault of its arithmetic. No cover included either, at a hundred pounds.
See it on AmazonDuronic CA20 BK 3-Tier Heated Clothes Airer, 202W
£79.99. The lowest published wattage of any three-tier airer in the audit, with a full specification on the listing: 202W, 112 x 62 x 46cm, folds to 15.5cm, 45 to 55C bars, 24kg rating. That level of detail is rare enough to reward.
The catch: the low wattage is a marketing headline. At 202W this needs 6.1 hours to reach the evaporation floor against 4.1 for a 300W model, and the energy it uses to finish the job is identical. You are buying a slower airer, not a cheaper one.
See it on AmazonAddis Superdry+ Heated Clothes Airer with Cover, 300W
£160.00. Twenty-one metres of drying space, a 15kg limit, a digital timer, and a full-height fitted cover with roll-up front access in the price. Addis puts the wattage and the drying space in the title, and the cover is the part that does the work: it is the difference between the 48p row and the 81p row of our cost table.
The catch: it is the joint most expensive airer here and it is new enough that there is almost no review history to lean on. Twenty-one metres also needs real floor space, so measure before you order.
See it on AmazonLakeland Dry:Soon 3-Tier Heated Clothes Airer, 300W
£159.99. The airer most people have heard of: 21m across three tiers, a 15kg limit, thermostatically controlled bars, folds to 8cm deep. It carries 1,314 ratings at 4.4 stars, more accumulated owner experience than everything else on this page put together.
The catch: no cover at £159.99, and the Dry:Soon cover is sold separately. Price it in before you compare this against the Addis, which includes one at a pound more. On the numbers that matter here the two are identical: same 300W, same 21m, same 4.1 hours to the floor.
See it on AmazonDry:Soon Heated Drying Pod, 1,000W
£64.99. A zipped pod with a 1,000W fan blowing warm air over up to 12 hanging items. It reaches the evaporation floor in 1.2 hours against 4.1 for a 300W rack, and because cost per load tracks the energy and not the wattage, arriving four times faster does not cost four times more. The enclosed cover keeps more of the heat off the room. With 2,382 ratings it is the best-evidenced fast option here.
The catch: hangers only, so bedding and towels are out, and a 1,000W fan is audible in a way a heated rail is not. Leave this one running unattended for eight hours out of habit and you will spend £2.11 drying one load.
See it on AmazonThe listings we will not rank
Sixteen of the 49 airers we read publish no wattage anywhere in the seller’s own copy: not the title, the bullets, the description or the specification table. On several, the only power figure on the page comes from another shopper answering a question. That is not a specification, and we will not build a cost table on it.
Six of those sixteen still quote a price per hour, which is the unsourced hour at its purest: a cost with no wattage behind it and no drying time in front of it. Because a price per hour is only the wattage multiplied by the electricity rate, you can run each claim backwards and see what it implies:
| Listing | Claim | Wattage published? | Implied power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black+Decker BXAR0001GB | 2p per hour | No | 76W |
| Black+Decker 63099 3-Tier | 4p per hour | No | 152W |
| Highlands winged airer | Less than 4p per hour | No | 152W or less |
| Minky SureDRI Winged | 8p per hour | No | 304W |
| Homefront winged airer | “Pennies per hour” | No | Unquantified |
A 76W airer with 18 bars and two heated wings would be a remarkable piece of engineering, and Black+Decker may have built one. We cannot tell, because the listing does not say. Until it does, these stay unranked.
The 30-minute claim
Thirteen of the 33 airers that publish a wattage draw between 1,000W and 1,800W, sold under the same search term as the 202W racks. A shopper comparing “heated airers” is looking at products that differ ninefold in power.
Two 1,800W models lead with a 30-minute drying claim in the product title. Half an hour at 1,800W delivers 0.90 kWh. The floor for a 3kg load is 1.22 kWh. The claim is about 73 per cent of the energy the water alone needs, before a single joule is lost to the room, so it cannot hold for a full wash load. For a couple of shirts, it may well.
The same listing settles the matter itself: its timer runs from 30 to 300 minutes. Set it to the top of its own range and that airer draws 9 kWh, which is £2.37 for one load, or two and a half times a condenser tumble dryer. The 30 minutes is the bottom of a dial, and it has been printed as though it were a specification.
How to check your own airer
We have not measured any of these machines. The efficiency multiplier in our cost table is the one number on this page that is an assumption and not a specification or a physical constant. You can settle it for your own house in a single wash with a plug-in energy monitor, which costs about a tenner.
- Weigh the laundry dry, before you wash it. Three kilos is about a full basket of cottons.
- Zero the monitor, plug the airer through it, and run until the washing is dry to the touch.
- Read the kilowatt hours. Divide by 1.22 for a 3kg load, scaling the floor up or down if your load was heavier or lighter.
- That ratio is your multiplier. Under 1.5 and your set-up is good. Over 2.5 and a cover or a warmer room will pay for itself quickly.
One last thing the wattage will not tell you: all 1.74 kilograms of that water ends up in the air of your house. Government guidance on damp and mould lists indoor drying among the moisture sources to manage. If your windows stream in the morning, read our guides to stopping condensation on windows and to dehumidifiers ranked by running cost before you buy a bigger airer. Running a dehumidifier alongside protects the fabric of the house and adds its own energy to the load, which our heated airer running costs page prices in full.
Questions
Which heated airer is cheapest to run?
None of them, on the evidence available. They all pay the same evaporation floor of about 1.22 kWh a load, then add whatever their surroundings waste. The cheapest to run is whichever one sits in a warm room under a cover, whatever the badge says. A 202W model will not beat a 300W model on the bill; it will take two more hours to finish.
Is a heated airer cheaper than a tumble dryer?
Against a condenser dryer at about 92p a cycle, almost always. Against a heat pump dryer at about 53p, only if your airer is covered and in a heated room. A heat pump dryer recycles the heat it makes, which is why it competes with the floor at all.
Is a cover worth buying separately?
On our cost table the gap between a covered airer in a warm room and an open one in a cold room is 33p a load, or about £86 a year at five loads a week. A cover at £15 to £25 pays for itself inside three months on those numbers. It is the highest-value thing you can buy in this category, and three of our seven picks leave it out of the box.
Do heated airers cause damp?
They move water from your washing into your air, as any indoor drying does. A 3kg load releases about 1.74 litres. Whether that turns into condensation depends on ventilation and how cold your surfaces are. Government guidance for rented housing recommends “drying laundry outdoors (if possible) and opening windows periodically”.
Will these figures change in January?
The money will, the physics will not. The evaporation floor stays at 1.22 kWh a load; only the price of a kilowatt hour moves. When Ofgem sets the January to March 2027 cap we will re-price every figure on this page and re-date it.
Sources
- Ofgem, Energy price cap unit rates and standing charges. Cap of £1,723 for 1 October to 31 December 2026; electricity 26.32p per kWh and 54.83p daily standing charge on direct debit; no VAT on electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. Read 20 September 2026.
- Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/2014, Annex II, Table 3, as retained in UK law. Spin-drying efficiency classes by remaining moisture content: A under 45 per cent, B 45 to 54, C 54 to 63. Read 20 September 2026.
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government with DHSC and UKHSA, Understanding and addressing the health risks of damp and mould in the home, updated 1 April 2026.
- Our own audit of 49 heated clothes airer listings on Amazon UK, read 20 September 2026. Wattages, prices, cost claims and drying-time claims taken from each seller’s title, bullet points, description and specification table only, excluding reviews, customer questions and recommendation carousels.
Prices are a guide and move constantly; check on Amazon before buying. Nothing here is financial advice.