Gareth Williams - 23 Jan 2025

Types of home air purifiers: pros, cons and how they work

So, you’re potentially in the market for an air purifier, eh? You’ve probably ended up on this page for the same reason so many others do: because you’re living in a city, in close proximity to other people and traffic – two things that often mean bad smells (curry and cigarettes, we’re looking at you) and generally unclean air. 🚗

If you’re lucky enough to live alongside a park, but unlucky enough to be a hay fever sufferer, you might also be looking for a way to banish pesky pollen from your home. 🌸

Whatever it is that’s motivating you to look at buying a home air purifier, you’ve come here for more information on the pros and cons – so without further ado, let’s dive right in.

What to know about air purifiers

Before we start on the pros and cons, we’ll begin with the air purifier 101. 🤓Air purifiers work by:

1. Sucking air into them
2. Plucking out particles and trapping them in a filter
3. Releasing ‘clean’ air back into the room

When we talk about ‘particles’, we mean things like airborne dust, dirt, pollen and other pathogens. 🦠 You can get large, industrial-size air purifiers for commercial settings, but the ones we’re talking about here are the small devices suitable for clearing the air in your home.

Types of air purifier

Google “air purifier” and you’ll be met with a bewildering array of options. You’ll probably spot the big boys – like Dyson, Levoi, Philips and Shark – but it might be slightly tricker to get a handle on the different types of household air purifiers on offer. So here’s the lowdown.

● The best air purifiers have HEPA filters. This stands for (geek alert 🚨) High Efficiency Particulate Arrestor, or as some would have it, High Efficiency Particle ABSORBER. However you refer to it, it basically means that it’s really very good at drawing out and trapping even the finest particles and allergens from the air.
● Then we have air purifiers that have activated charcoal filters, which typically work by using physical or chemical processes to absorb chemicals and odours rather than particulate.

Those are the two main types. You might also see UV purifiers, which use ultraviolet light to kill airborne bacteria and viruses, but won’t work on non-living particles such as dust and pollution. So let’s concentrate on the first two.

Benefits of an air purifier

The main pro of air purifiers is that they really do clean the air. If you’re feeling like the air in your home is wreaking havoc with your allergies – whether down to pollen or pollutants, or just dust – then an air purifier will make a noticeable difference to your air quality.

And that means it’ll make your home a healthier and more pleasant place to be. ✅

On a practical level, most air purifiers are quiet and unobtrusive, so you’d also be able to run one overnight and have no problems sleeping. 😴

What are the disadvantages of an air purifier?

So, that all sounds great – but is there a downside to air purifiers? Well, one thing they’re generally not very good at is banishing bad smells.

They will help a little, but the problem is that they’re designed to trap particles, and smells aren’t particles. They’re chemical molecules that our brains interpret as specific odours due to the way they interact with the chemicals in our nervous system. 🧑‍🔬

Air purifiers are great at trapping allergens, like dust, pollen, mould spores and pet hair, but they’re not equipped to deal with bad smells. You might get a bit of a reduction in cooking smells from them, but there’s a whole host of other nasty odours that they won’t touch. Stinky things like:

🚬 Cigarettes, cannabis and other types of smoke
🍛 Particularly stubborn cooking smells, like curry, fried onions or smoked fish
🐕 Pet smells, like cat litter trays or wet dog
💦 Damp and mould smells
🐁 Dead rodent smells

And we think we can all agree that if you’re going to invest in an air purifier, you might as well get one that can tackle all that as well as the regular air purifier stuff. So what’s the solution?

Is there an air purifier that removes particles AND smells?

Well, we’re glad you asked. Because there IS such a device, and it’s called the Smell Away®. This works in exactly the same way as an air purifier and handles all the nasties an air purifier handles – dust, dirt, pollution, pollen, bacteria, etc etc.

But on top of that, it also banishes bad smells. And if you’re going to make the air in your home nicer to breathe, smell is a pretty crucial part of that. Discover the odour-neutralising, dust-banishing powers of the Smell Away® and you’ll soon see why it’s got much more to offer than a regular air purifier.