Gareth Williams - 15 Jan 2025

Do air purifiers help with bad smells?

Horrid smells have as much of an impact on our home lives as noisy neighbours. But for some reason, we don’t seem to talk about them as much.

One of the reasons for that is that pongy smells are often seen as something we just have to live with. Who hasn’t plugged in an air freshener or lit a scented candle in the hope we can mask a stubborn stink?

Yet the reality is that trying to replace one smell with another never actually works. You just end up with the nicer smell ruined by the horrid one, which hasn’t gone anywhere.

That’s why in this article, we’re going to be delving into how effective air purifiers really are at ‘cleaning’ the air in our homes. Can they really create better air for people and pets to breathe in?

We suspect that if more people knew that there’s a simple way to remove these nasty smells, the world and their dog would be telling all their friends about it. And there is: it’s called an air purifier.

Today, we’re looking at the specific type of air purifier you’ll need in order to tackle problem smells.

Air purifiers for odours

The job of an air purifier is to ‘clean’ the air by removing particles and trapping them in a filter inside. This improves air quality, helping to remove some of the causes of bad smells, such as traffic pollution.

However, the effectiveness of most air purifiers is limited when it comes to tackling bad smells. That’s even true of the most advanced kind, which use a highly effective filter called a HEPA – an abbreviation of “High Efficient Particulate Arrestor” (or Absorbing, depending on who you listen to).

The thing is, smell isn’t a particle, so it can’t be trapped by a HEPA filter. So if you’re on the hunt for an air purifier to get rid of bad smells, don’t be fooled by the HEPA! What’s needed is a carbon filter, which you’ll find in our Smell Away®.

What smells could an air purifier like Smell Away® remove?

With a carbon filter on board, your air purifier is all set to banish all manner of unpleasant smells around the home.

Cooking smells – yes, including onions. And curry.

Traffic pollution smells.

Cat litter trays (which are actually what inspired the invention of Smell Away® in the first place). Wet dog.

Damp and mould smells. Cannabis 😬

Heck, it even works on dead rats (don’t ask how we know this).

And on top of all this, it also removes airborne dust, dirt, pathogens and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with its carbon filter, all at the same time.

That makes it perfect if you’re affected by air quality issues (hello, city dwellers) as well as nasty smells.

Using an air purifier to eliminate smoke

One of the most stubborn household smells is undoubtedly cigarette smoke, so it’s little wonder it’s one of the things we’re most often asked about.

Perhaps you’ve just bought a house previously owned by a smoker. Perhaps you’re a smoker yourself and you’re wanting to sell up. Or maybe your neighbours are the ones smoking, and you’re getting clouds of THEIR horrid smoke drifting into your home uninvited.

Either way, we think we can all agree that breathing in pure, clean-smelling air is preferable, not to mention healthier for everyone concerned.

But Google ‘how to get rid of cigarette smell’ and you’ll be met with all kinds of arduous-sounding suggestions, like:

🚬 Clean your carpets with baking soda
🚬 Wash your walls with vinegar (!)
🚬 Take a steam cleaner to your furniture
🚬 We quote: “Have a trained technician run an ozone generator for a few hours, then close the house for two days” 🤪

Ain’t nobody got time for that. What you need if you’ve got a cigarette smell problem on your hands is a good air purifier. Specifically, as we’ve seen, one with a charcoal filter.

(This also means you won’t need to worry about another good ol’ bit of Google advice: “Hang bags of activated charcoal around your home to absorb odor-causing molecules”. Phew 😅)

Whether it’s smoke from cigarettes, tobacco smoked in a pipe or a wacky flavour of vape, it’s all going to linger. And even worse, the nicotine and tar-infused smoke particles are sticky, so they’ll discolour your walls if they’re not sucked out of the air before they get there.

That’s until the Smell Away® gets to work. This highly effective device does the seemingly impossible: neutralises and eliminates cigarette smoke odours. No need to hire expensive professional cleaning companies or waste time with those silly Google solutions. Just plug it in and away you go.

So what are you waiting for? Get yours today and banish cigarette smoke and other horrid smells for good.