If you don’t have a rotary clothesline in the garden or prefer not to hang your laundry outside, there are roughly two options left: a tumble dryer, or drying your laundry indoors with the help of a dehumidifier. Both work, but they consume electricity in very different ways and are suited for different situations.
How a tumble dryer works
A tumble dryer heats the air and blows it past the wet laundry, causing the moisture to evaporate and then be discharged or condensed. This is a fast process, usually taking one to two hours, but it also consumes a relatively large amount of electricity: an average tumble dryer often uses between 1.5 and 3.5 kWh per cycle, depending on the type and the load.
How drying with a dehumidifier works
A dehumidifier does not heat the laundry. Instead, the device extracts moisture from the ambient air, keeping the air in the room dry enough to allow the laundry to dry naturally, just as it would on a drying rack outdoors. This process takes longer, often half a day to a full day, but the consumption per hour is significantly lower than that of a tumble dryer: a dehumidifier typically uses a few hundred watts, depending on the model and the settings.
Which is ultimately more economical?
If you calculate the electricity consumption per cycle, a dehumidifier often comes out relatively favorably in many households, especially if you have to dry laundry indoors during the autumn and winter anyway, meaning the dehumidifier serves a dual purpose: the laundry dries, and the humidity in the house remains under control. A tumble dryer is faster, which is valuable if you are in a hurry or need to process large amounts of laundry, but that speed comes at the cost of higher electricity consumption.
- Choose a tumble dryer if speed is important and you regularly need to dry large amounts of laundry at once.
- Choose drying with a dehumidifier if you already have a humidity problem in your home, don't have space for a tumble dryer, or consciously want to use less electricity per cycle.
Our advice
Our advice is to use the AirPure DH251 dehumidifier from Dynter if you regularly dry laundry indoors. Place the drying rack in a smaller room with the door closed and let the device do its work: this combines faster drying than without assistance with relatively low electricity consumption, while simultaneously preventing the humidity in your home from becoming too high due to all that wet laundry.
Both devices have their own place. For those who prioritize speed, a tumble dryer remains the obvious choice. For those who prioritize electricity consumption and dry indoor air, drying with a dehumidifier is often the smarter route.