Do air purifiers help with allergies? Find out how they can improve your health

Home » Air Purifiers » Do air purifiers help with allergies? Find out how they can improve your health

Last Updated On 2 October 2026
Written By Chris Michael
6 minutes Read Time

If you or a member of your family has an allergy, you are likely to want to make the air in your home as allergen-free as possible. There are lots of natural and man-made allergens in the air in all our homes, and some of these can exacerbate existing conditions. You may even find that they cause problems that weren’t there before. So, do air purifiers help with allergies?

How Do Air Purifiers Help?

With allergies, you’ve probably already tried lots of different solutions – but have you tried an air purifier? At Meaco we sell combined dehumidifiers and air purifiers with medical-grade H13 HEPA filters to remove particles from the air in your home. There are several factors to consider when you’re thinking about buying one of these units. We have previously written about the importance of matching an air purifier to the room size; that’s because without calculating your room size, you may spend money on an appliance that doesn’t have the impact you’re expecting. If your allergy is mild, a small unit – even in a large room – will do the job. Those with a more severe allergy will need a large appliance in a small space; if your room is large, we’d recommend running a larger unit, or even two, to alleviate your symptoms.

For this article, however, we’re concentrating on the things that might be causing or impacting on the allergy. This will help us show you how to choose the right appliance for your needs. So here are some things to think about:

2-in-1 dehumidifier and air purifiers can help to reduce allergens and improve health.

Do you want to remove a smell from the air? This is particularly useful for people who want to remove cigarette or tobacco smells from their home, as well as cooking smells, which can be particularly strong in smaller homes and apartments.
Do you want to deal with pollen? Pollen triggers seasonal allergies like hayfever. So removing it from the air in your home will give you some relief indoors.
Are you concerned about VOCs? A Volatile Organic Compound, or VOC, is a compound that can easily become a gas or vapour. Examples include particles released when burning wood or coal, but they are also common in some products including solvents, air fresheners and cleaning products.
Do you want to kill dust mite allergens, germs and bacteria? If it’s particularly important to you to reduce the potential for bacteria or germs in the air, look for an air purifier that can handle the task.

Understand what you want to achieve and then make sure that your air purifier can do the job.

Why Choose a 2-in-1 Dehumidifier and Air Purifier?

A combined dehumidifier and air purifier, such as our MeacoDry Arete® and Low Energy models, help tackle not only common household problems like condensation and drying laundry indoors, but can remove airborne particles too.

For humidity management, the root cause may be colder weather setting in, a busy household, or drying multiple loads of laundry. A dehumidifier can tackle this by removing excess moisture and managing the relative humidity indoors. Removing moisture from the air with a dehumidifier helps prevent mould and damp, which release particles like mould spores into the air in your home. By preventing these issues from arising in the first place, you’re one step ahead.

What sets a 2-in-1 model apart is that it can also tackle and remove large particles as well as some indoor air pollutants, purifying your indoor environment.

Plus, if there are fewer contaminants in the air to remove as a result of dehumidification, your filter will last longer.

This makes a combination 2-in-1 unit a great solution for managing humidity as well as removing allergens and other particles.

Choose an Air Purifier with a HEPA Filter

We’d always recommend a HEPA filter as a minimum. A good HEPA filter captures most of the tiny particles in the air. HEPA is a recognised standard, and so filters claiming the HEPA title must meet the approved standards.

Our range of 2-in-1 dehumidifiers and air purifiers uses HEPA filters as part of a multi-stage filter process. This helps to remove a wide range of particles from the air in your home. We’ve listed the stages we use below:

Pre-filter – This Captures Large Airborne Particles.

HEPA filter – captures 99.75% of particles larger than 0.3 microns in size which means it will capture most of the particles that are in the air. If you think that a human hair is 40+ microns in size it gives you an idea of just how small 0.3 microns is.

A HEPA filter will capture particles like:

Pollen
Mould spores
Pet dander
Dust mites
Some bacteria

Enhanced activated charcoal filter – the next line of defence and removes those things that you can smell:

Smoke
Chemical fumes
VOCs
Numerous other odours such as cooking smells

Ioniser

The last element in the air purification process is the ioniser. Not all ionisers are born equal and their effectiveness is often overstated. Unless you have an advanced anti-bacterial sterilising oniser like the one that is found on our DD8L Pro dehumidifier, then don’t expect too much from your ioniser. What it will do for you is to make dust in the immediate vicinity of the air purifier heavier so that it either gets sucked into the air purifier or falls to ground to be vacuumed up or captured when you polish.

So now you know what the various types of filters do you can start to match your filter up to your allergy. For most people a HEPA filter is the ideal solution to tackle the main issue (allergens such as pollen, for example), which is why it’s included as standard in our Arete® 2-in-1 dehumidifier and air purifiers. To deal with other issues like unpleasant smells, a charcoal filter is your best line of defence. These can be bought separately for our Arete®s and used instead of a HEPA filter.

As always if you have any outstanding questions then please do call us on 01483 234900 and we’ll be happy to help and advise.