View image in fullscreen Guardian journalism is independent. We earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more .
Heated airers claim to dry your clothes without costing the earth in energy. We put 19 to the test over two years, from covered options to winged racks
Jane Hoskyn Updated Mon 26 Oct 2026 16.00 CET Share Prefer the Guardian on Google R ising energy bills and perma-drizzle are conspiring to keep the nation’s laundry damp, not least by making it such a turn-off to turn on the heating. No wonder heated clothes airers are having a moment. These modish appliances sell out within hours of reaching shops and inspire evangelistic fervour among owners, who call them “life-savers” and “gamechangers”.
Can a hot clothes horse really change your life, let alone dry your soggy washing as fast as a tumble dryer for a fraction of the cost and, in most cases, with none of the noise? After testing 19 bestsellers over the past two years – during which time I took my tumble dryer to the dump and slashed my dependency on radiators – I can confidently say yes.
Not every airer I tested made the final cut. A few, though, impressed me so much I’m now fully converted to the belief that the heated clothes airer is the best thing in laundry since the clothes peg.
Best heated clothes airer overall Lakeland Dry:Soon Deluxe 3-tier heated airer and cover
Best budget heated airer Black+Decker Heated winged clothes airer
Best heated airer for fast drying Minky SureDri Heat Pod Pro
Why you should trust me I’ve spent three decades testing products from Sky boxes to mattress toppers, and it’s made me professionally sceptical of manufacturers’ claims to magically solve domestic problems. I also have a solid background in procrastinating by doing laundry, hanging laundry and folding laundry, so I couldn’t resist the Filter’s offer to pay me to watch clothes dry.
View image in fullscreen We tested the temperature of the heated clothes airers with an infrared thermometer. Photograph: Jane Hoskyn/The Guardian Heated airers all do much the same thing in much the same way. There are small differences in design – some have triangle frames, some are winged and some have covers – but they’re basically all clothes horses that you plug in. I had to find clear distinctions between them, and this chiefly meant devising fair, quantifiable tests to measure how quickly, evenly and cheaply each airer dried clothes.
The key test was a half-hourly laundry weigh-in to measure how quickly each airer dried an identical load. Actually, two identical loads – one small (4kg) and one big (8kg) – 19 times, once for every airer. I removed and weighed the clothes every 30 minutes to see how much moisture had evaporated until the fabric was dry, and this gave me an overall drying time. Room temperature remained at a steady 19-20C throughout. For more behind-the-scenes insights into weighing knickers, check out the Filter’s newsletter .
I took other measurements too, not least to give me something (anything) to do while the laundry dried, such as the dimensions of each airer and the length of its heated bars. I used an infrared thermometer to take the bars’ temperature every 30 seconds to compare heat-up times, and a wattage meter to check power usage. I then used the October 2026 electricity price cap (26.32p a kWh) to work out running costs an hour.
After testing, I donated the airers to two organisations that do important work in and around Southamp…