A musty smell, foggy windows, a damp patch that never quite dries out — that's excess humidity, and it doesn't fix itself. A good dehumidifier pulls water straight out of the air, which means drier walls, fewer dust mites, and a basement that finally stops smelling like one.
The five below cover different rooms and different tolerances for emptying a water tank, from compact bedroom units to basement machines that can run for days without you touching them.
This pulls up to 50 pints a day, which is enough for a mid-size basement or a garage that stays damp through the summer. The app lets you check the tank and set a target humidity from your phone, so you're not walking downstairs just to see if it's full.
Rated for spaces up to 4,500 square feet, this is built for whole-basement duty rather than a single room. It has a continuous drain hose option, so once it's plumbed to a floor drain you can effectively forget about the tank entirely.
GE's version leans on a humidistat you can set and leave, plus a continuous drain option and auto-restart if the power flickers, which matters in a basement that's already prone to trouble. The bucket-full alarm is loud enough to actually notice from another floor.
Rated for 1,500 square feet, this is sized for a single damp room rather than an open basement, and it costs noticeably less than the bigger units here. It still has Wi-Fi control and a continuous drain option, which is more than a lot of pricier machines offer.
Sized for bedrooms and bathrooms rather than basements, this smaller Frigidaire still pulls 22 pints a day and holds Energy Star certification, so it won't spike your electric bill running through a humid week. Custom humidity control and auto shut-off keep it from overflowing while you're not paying attention.
Match pint capacity and coverage to the actual room: a 22-pint unit suits a single bedroom or bathroom, while a basement or multi-room space usually needs 50 pints or more. If you don't want to empty a tank daily, look for a continuous drain hose option so it can run unattended near a floor drain. Noise matters too — basements are forgiving, but a unit running in a bedroom should stay in the low-to-mid 40s decibels or quieter.
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