Have you just bought an excellent air purifier? Congratulation! However, apart from buying a high-quality product, there is another problem you have to tackle – your air purifier location.
Where to place an air purifier? This must be a difficult question for many people. But do not worry as we will solve it for you right here. Just keep reading to learn proper locations for placing the air purifier in your home!
Which Is the Best Room for an Air Purifier?
When we talk about the best location for an air purifier here, we consider not only the most advantageous position for its air cleaning capability but also the comfort of people living within the house.
For example, a bulky HEPA air purifier like the Honeywell 50250s can take a lot of space in your house so that you must consider your comfort as well.
First of all, before you can determine a specific position for your air purifier, you need to decide which room you should place it.
The top priority option is usually the room where your family spends most of the time living in, and the second option is in rooms that are more likely to be affected by the spread of airborne contaminants.
Your living room
Many households choose their living rooms to be where they put their air purifiers as those are the rooms where the whole family spends most of their time.
Living rooms are also where you welcome your guests, including smokers and some other sources of pollutants, and you will always want to ensure the air quality in such locations, too.
Your children’s room
In other cases, parents often put an air purifier in the room of their kids, especially if they are still infants. This is because youngsters are prone to catch allergies and respiratory problems from harmful airborne pollutants due to their weak internal organs and immune systems.
Your bathroom and kitchen
Commonly, bathrooms and kitchens are ideal areas for bad odors, smokes, and other pollutants like bacteria, mold, and mildew to attack you and the walls.
Therefore, these are also among the best places to put an air purifier.
Your bedroom
Another typical location for an air purifier is your bedroom. According to a simple calculation, only an 8-hour sleep makes you spend one-third of a day in your bedroom.
So the chances are that you might even spend up to half of your time in your bedroom, making it the place where the air you breathe the most.
Multiple rooms
Finally, if you find that there are many rooms in your home requiring air purification, buy several air purifiers or install a whole-house model.
A whole-house air purifier can be connected to the air ducts of the existing HVAC system in your home to clean the air all in all rooms. Yet, this would require professional installation and cost you a small fortune.
Where To Place An Air Purifier in Bedroom?
Now you decide to put your air purifier in your bedroom, but where to put air purifier in your bedroom? Just stick to the following guidelines:
- The machine should be approximately 5 to 9 feet away from your bed.
- Try to put the appliance near the room center as possible.
- The output for fresh air ought to direct toward you.
Besides, when placing the air purifier, you should pay attention to the intensity of the light and the noise of the fan since they can make it hard to sleep for you. Avoid letting the light shine on you and the sound direction of the fan point to your ears.
Tips For Placing Your Air Purifier in Your Home
Tip #1 – Consider your air purifier’s coverage
Whether your air purifier uses an activated carbon filter or a HEPA filter, its capacity to clean the air will decrease over distance. Hence, depending on the coverage of your device, you had better put it in a spot that takes the most out of it.
For example, if your air purifier merely covers around 200 square feet, you should not place it too far from your room or in a large basement of 800 square feet. Those positions will not bring about enough clean air.
On the other hand, if you purchase an air purifier with the coverage capability of as high as 1000 square feet, do not just place it in your little bedroom. It is an unworthy waste, and most maintenance tips also recommend doing this to prolong the device’s lifespan.
In most cases, if your appliance has a wide coverage, let’s put it at the center of your home (yet not too far from your room). On the contrary, if it is not, just place it in one room only.
Tip #2 – Near the source of pollutants and odors
Placing your air purifiers next to the odor and pollution sources will ensure their optimal efficiency. As a rule of thumb, like air cleaners, an air purifier will sanitize the indoor air near it first as well as its performance will decrease over distance.
This tip is especially important for UV air purifiers. Nonetheless, when following this tip, you should still let the airflow to the device smoothly, as we will explain in the third tip below.
Tip #3 – Avoid tight spaces and corners
Nearly every air purifier pulls the polluted air using its front-facing intake vent. Therefore, if it is placed in tight spaces such as at a corner of the room, behind a wardrobe or a TV, it can hardly take advantage of the air circulation to generate much fresh air.
Thus, to optimize the equipment’s capacity, you must avoid corners and put it in an open space. If your room/house is too small to put the air purifier on the floor, you can consider putting it on a table.
Tip #4 – Use your air purifier as a security guard!
Imagine that airborne particles are trying to attack you, an air purifier will be your security guard.
After making sure your room’s air is clean, you can use the air purifier to block pet dander, bacteria, viruses, dust and pollen, and so on before they get into your room.
For better results, rotate the device until the face with vents that pull the contaminated air points outside, and the filtered air should flow toward your breathing zone.
However, beware of any tripping hazard when you practice this tip.
FAQs
Can you move your air purifier from room to room?
Of course, yes. There is nothing wrong with that. When the device has finished purifying the air in one room, you can move it to the next location.
Nonetheless, it is still best if you place your air purifier in only one room all the time. And if you have only one air purifier, we recommend keeping it in your bedroom since it is where you spend most of your time at home.
Can you sleep with an air purifier?
Yes, you can. When you place your air purifier near your bed, it can even improve your sleep.
Apart from improving your indoor air quality so that you can breathe more comfortably, an air purifier can emit a kind of soothing sound known as white noise, which is scientifically proven to be a sleep aid. This noise is similar to the white noise that air conditioners produce.
However, you ought to set the device to Night Mode, Sleep Mode, or the lowest setting, or else the fan will be too noisy, and the light will be too bright for you to sleep.
Can you run an air purifier all the time?
Apart from the question “Where should I place my air purifier?”, another matter that many people care about is whether they can run their air purifiers all the time or not.
In most cases, you can run this device all the time since they are engineered to do that. However, there are still models that should only run for 6 – 8 hours per cycle.
You can determine how long to run your air purifier depending on the air quality in your home, and the recommended operation duration in the user manual that manufacturers provide.
Conclusion
Now you know where to place the air purifier in your home, right? Bear in mind that you should place it in a way that optimizes the device’s performance without affecting your comfort.
In brief, you had better:
- Place your air purifier in the most advantageous positions by its coverage
- Put your air purifier near the pollutant source
- Avoid placing the device in tight spaces and corners (you need to maintain several feet of clearance around it)
- Use it as a security guard at the entrance of the room
Source: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/air/sources.htm
https://medlineplus.gov/bacterialinfections.html
