How to Add Humidity to a Room: Lets Fix a Dry Room

What’s Causing Dry Air/Low Humidity in Room?

The main cause for low humidity in a room is the low temperature. It's related to cold weather or, winter season. Because of the low temperature, the air loses water portion and becomes dry or low humid.

Some people will crank up on their HVAC system finding a solution for that. But this will eventually heat the air but doesn't help to increase humidity in a room.

The Problem(S) With Dry Air and How to Combat?

There’re number of problems you may face due to low humidity in your home. From dry skin conditions and eyes to pathetic nose and respiratory attacks may be caused due to the exposure of low humid air.

Besides, depending on the strength of one’s immunity system, there might be some other kind of illness. And here’re some of the health impacts you may experience due to low humidity conditions.

1. Impacts on Your Respiratory System

Breathing overly dry air will lead your bronchial fluid to evaporate quickly. So the tube will get dehydrated which irritates the respiratory system.

As result, it'll gradually lose the power to save your lungs from dirt, dust, and viruses that you inhale through the air. Medical experts say that illnesses like sinusitis, bronchitis, asthma, spasms might be worsening due to this.

2. Effects on Your Eyes and Nose

Over-exposure to dry air may put an impact on the tear film of your eyes. This will eventually lead to eye irritation. Sometimes, we may be able to feel when running the AC for a long time resulting in reducing moisture in our room or office.

Also, this condition may cause nosebleeds for some people. You may experience it in any weather season but winter is when the majority of patients will come to know. So over-dry air is definitely not good for breathing in a long time.

At home or office, if you’re working in an Air-Conditioned room, it’s highly suggested to use a room humidifier that can save your life.

3. Throat Inflammation

Low humid air can cause soaring in your throat. That’s the start of catching you by the cold and you start feeling the inflammation.

4. Sleep Disorders

Low air humidity can increase your stress level since it causes the heart rate to change from its normal range. As a result, you may suffer from sleep disorders.

5. Dehydration

Dehydration can lead our bodies to dangerous complications. You may feel shocks since the body loses its average range of water and ultimately fails to function properly.

Hence, cells, tissues, and other organs might be damaged to some extent. According to a research conducted by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information –

“After adjusting for age, gender, employment duration, and body surface area, we found that working in the dry rooms was associated with an odds ratio of 11.9 (95% confidence interval: 2.5 to 56.9) of having abnormally concentrated urine”

As a summary, here’s what happens –

Remember, drinking enough water can help you stay hydrated during the winter season. Something like time-marked water bottles will remind your daily goals and thus replenish body fluid to stay healthy in low humid environments. This is very important especially after physical labor.

6. Cracked Lips and Skin Problems

As mentioned earlier, dry air will suck up your skin moisture so it becomes scaly. You start feeling itching, flaking, and inflammation in your lips ultimately resulting in a different body appearance.

This may also prolong your existing skin infections, thus you take up more time to cure. Humidifying the room will solve most of these problems in miserable winters. However, to avoid extreme conditions, it’s better to use body moisturizing products.

7. Other Body Infection

Cold air may increase the chances of pneumonia commonly seen in children. Other viruses and deadly flues may also attack your body when living in low humid weather snaps. So the overall condition of your body becomes vulnerable and you start losing the power to defend against germs and infections.

8. Damage to Your Home

Dry air tries to remain humid so it collects moisture from anywhere it can. Therefore, it can absorb the stored moisture in your house's wooden structure, furniture, and basement, whatsoever!

So you may experience cracks in wooden bases, floor, gap initiated between the wall and floor/ceiling, etc. Some wooden furniture, doors, windows might deform a little and become hard to operate smoothly as they should be.

How to Know If the Air in Your House Is Too Dry?

The ideal humidity is 30 and 50 percent. If it’s measuring below 30 percent, you should take care and try to rise it to standard level. Also, You can easily understand there’s dry air in your house by observing any of the 8 problems discussed above. However, the most commonly noticed symptoms can be dry skin, cracked lips, or throat inflammation.

Recommendation: You can use hygrometer for getting know about your room humidity level.

1. Feeling Sudden Shock

Low humid air produces electrostatic discharge or ESD. Hence, the static electricity can’t be dissipated due to low moisture. So it builds up causing folded blankets or clothes to stick together.

Remarkably, metal parts in your house will have electric shock stocked. This is very tiny and not so harmful to the human body but a great way to know the air in your house is getting drier.

2. The Feeling of Dehydration

If you’re feeling dehydrated too frequently without having any existing health issues, this might be a sign that the air in your house is already low humid.

3. Getting Nosebleeds

Dry air will evaporate nasal mucus causing the canal to dry out. This may cause serious wounds and your experience nosebleeds. It's better to take care of this problem in the beginning before it turns to other infections in the nasal passages.

4. Cracks and Shrinks in Wood

Wooden furniture can indicate if the air in your house is too dry. The moisture is absorbed by the air and then actually shrinks.

Most of the time furniture, wooden items, house wood base, and floor can incorporate little contraction and you may not even notice it. However, when the expansion goes beyond the limit, they begin to crack.

5. Breathing Problems

If there's low humid air in your room, a long night sleeping will raise some symptoms like dry throat and possible inflammation. You might feel thirsty as well.

6. Scaly Skin and Cracked Lips

If you feel the painful stretch on your skin and your lips get drier comparatively faster than what's normal, it's potentially due to low humidity.

7. Testing with Ice Cubes

Take a drinking glass and put a few ice cubes into that. If you see moisture is forming on the outer side of the glass, this is a good indication that the room humidity level is good. But if that doesn’t happen, it means you need to take care.

Also read: Make a weather predicting glass at home.

How to Increase Humidity in a Room: [9] Amazing Solutions

So from the above discussion, you may already have understood the impacts of dry air on our bodies. You should never expose to overly dry air for a long time. But it's the nature where we have nothing to do to stop coming especially in winter.

However, there’re some amazing things we can do! Some of these techniques will cost money such as buying a humidifier. On the other hand, some are just tips that explain your personal precautions.

With that in mind, here’s how to get rid of low humid air in your house –

1. Using Humidifier

It’s the fastest and most effective way to get more moisture in the air. And before purchasing a room humidifier, make sure to measure the room to ensure you get the right product that'll cover the entire space.

Related: Humidistat or hygrometer: which one should use?

2. Using Oil Diffuser

Other than humidifiers, oil diffusers can also help to increase humidity level in a room.

3. Add Houseplants

Plants can help to get rid of dry air and moisturize a dry room. Therefore, adding houseplants to your room can also be a solution. Besides, adding a natural vibe to your room's appearance, they retain humidity to a certain level. You just have to supply them with enough water in time. This is more like a natural remedy.

4. Air Drying Clothes

Try to air-dry your clothes other than using a dryer. This will cause the water to get sucked up in the air and eventually contribute to adding humidity.

5. Air Drying Utensils

If you're not in urgent need to use the tableware, it's always better to air dry them after washing. So the remaining part of water can be added to the air naturally.

6. Don’t Flash the Bathtub Water

Once you're done taking a hot bath, leave the water in the bathtub. They will still be some evaporation because of the temperature difference with the water. This will cause the air to become more humid.

7. Heat Water in Your Room

This is another great way to add humidity naturally. Place a bowl with water neat the room heating system so that it becomes hot and starts to evaporate.

Now, if you don't have an HVAC system in the house, don't forget to put them under direct sunlight if it has a way through the windows. This will also work the same way.

8. Boiling Water

If you want to add humidity to the air without a humidifier, this is another natural yet fast and very effective method. Just boil water to let it evaporate to a certain level deepening on the size of the room.

9. Using a Damp Towel

Dampen a towel in water and lay it down near the heating register or baseboard heater. This will heat up the towel and water will start to evaporate.

It’s the best alternative to putting a dish because the wide surface causes more evaporation. So that’s how to fix a dry room and save yourself from all kinds of dangerous health impacts.