According to Carolyn Forte of the Good Housekeeping Research Institute, "if the air in your house is too dry and the humidity is under 30 percent, it can cause, or even worsen conditions like allergies, itchy eyes, bronchitis, even nose bleeds. So, in the wintertime, it's really a good idea to have a humidifier. Here at the good housekeeping research institute, we tested 21 different humidifiers in our climatology chamber and we found a few excellent models."
Honeywell's $80 Cool-Mist HCM-300T was Good Housekeeping's top performer. Carolyn says, "this model raised the humidity in our test chamber room to 50 percent in under a half an hour, and it also has a u-v light to disinfect the water."
At $200, the Ultrasonic Air-O-Swiss AOS 7144 is a splurge. But according to Carolyn, "what we like about this model is that it uses either warm or cool mist, there are no filters to change, and it contains silver ions, which have been shown to control and prevent microbial growth."
Good Housekeeping says cool-mist humidifiers are the safest type to use around children. but because they use a fan to evaporate water, cool-mist humidifiers can cause a chilling effect in a room. While ultrasonic humidifiers tend to be the quietest type of humidifier because their fans are smaller and there's no gurgling water.
