Good Humidifiers for Babies: Cool Mist vs. Warm Mist

Out of all the humidifiers it is hard to choose what is a good humidifier for baby. There used to be only few humidifiers you could have selected from, but now days you get a lot of choices. Such as should you go with the cool mist or a warm mist? What is the difference between the two?

In recent years doctors have been recommending more and more the cool mist humidifiers rather than the warm mist. The main reason for this is that the cool mist do not use heater to warm the water and the steam has a potential of hurting little one or the parents... However, now days they do have a lot of warm mist humidifiers that do have built in humidistat that tells you what the humidity level in the room is and they also come with the automatic shut off, if the water tank is empty.

You may want to discuss it with your Pediatrician before you chose which one you go with . But here is a little more information and the difference between the cool mist and the warm mist humidifiers.

As mentioned before you need to get the one with the built in humidistat and an automatic shut off when the water tank is empty. You do not want too much or too little humidity in the room. The perfect humidity should be between the 30-50% per experts.

The cool mist humidifiers tend to cool the room temperature a lot, while the warm mist kept the temperature at the comfortable level (as long as they have the built in humidistat).

With the cool mist humidifier, you will need to use distilled water, while with the warm mist you do not have to...On the other hand, the warm mist warms the water and is more effective with killing the bacteria in the air because of the steam. Also with the cool mist humidifier you do need to change the filter at least once a year.

One more thing to keep in mind is noise level of the humidifier. You probably want to one that is very quiet and some of the quiet brands are models such as Air-O-Swiss Ultrasonic Humidifiers and Vicks Humidifiers. There are pros and cons to both cool mist and warm mist humidifier for the baby. But it is important to select the one that is quiet, has a build in humidistat and the automatic shot off when the water tank is empty.