ADDIS 4-Bar Radiator Airer, Pack of 2

Product Information

Heated bar clothes airers use (as the name suggests) heated bars to dry clothes, with each one acting like a mini radiator.

Gated: Aptly named, these airers resemble fences and fold out to stand in a concertina. These are normally the cheapest clothes airers and are popular with students because they’re functional and don’t take up much space in storage. However, this design hasn’t made it into our best buy roundup because they tend to be flimsy and unstable.

Heated: Whilst they are much more expensive than your standard clothes airer, heated airers can hugely cut down on drying time. These resemble tiered or winged airers, and are plugged into the mains to heat up each drying rung. Additionally, they’re less expensive to run than tumble dryers and are gentler on your clothes.

It’s effectively a fan on detachable tripod feet with a pole, at the top of which there are six spokes designed to hold up to 12 hangers of spin-dried or well-wrung damp clothing (up to 10kg). It’s particularly useful for shirts and blouses, since being able to hang T-shirts in this way means they dry straight with minimal creases, meaning less ironing. But it’s less useful for drying, say, towels. Compared to a tumble dryer, however, the story is a little more nuanced. If you have small amounts of washing that can fit on a heated airer in one go, then there are savings to be made when compared to condenser tumble dryers. Finding the best heated clothes airer may not sound like the most exciting of pursuits. But as a means of drying your clothes in winter, these gadgets are hard to beat. Not only is a heated airer far kinder to your treasured garments than tumble drying (it adds years to the lifespan of your clothes), it’s also better for the environment. It eliminates that damp washing smell and is a good way of minimising crinkles, so you might not need to invest in an iron or a steamer. Most heated airers also fold up compactly for storage. per hour for 200W dryers and 9p per hour for 300W dryers, approximately. This is based on the energy price cap of 30p per kW/h since July 1 2023, although prices will vary according to your tariff.

A typical drying pod will do a cotton load in a couple of hours, and a tumble dryer will take anywhere from one to three hours to do a big load of laundry. It's faster than air-drying indoors, but a heated clothes airer is still the slowest of the three.