Best quiet fans for the bedroom 2023 UK

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Sleep well in a heatwave with our best tower fans Pc Radiator

Whether you're prone to night sweats, you run hot or you’re struggling with warmer weather, if your body temperature isn’t right, it can keep you up when you should be slumbering peacefully. So, it may be time to invest in a quality and, equally crucial, quiet fan – after all, there’s no use buying one that only adds to your sleepless nights because it sounds like an aeroplane taking off.

Fans aren’t the only solution for hot nights of course – it's worth looking at everything from your mattress, to your duvet and even your sheets to check they're all breathable. But a fan can take the edge off, meaning you should feel more like Sleeping Beauty and less like you’ve just left the gym.

The models below are all tower fans – our favourite style for the bedroom because their taller design means most can blow air onto you without any precarious stacking on chairs, piles of magazines and so forth.

To find the best quiet fans for your bedroom, our Women’s Health Lab experts put a selection of market leaders to the test, assessing which made us feel most comfortable on hot nights and which performed best for noise control. These are our star picks at a glance:

Technically, tower fans don’t make air cooler. Instead, the air that blows over your skin makes everything feel more comfortable. So, the more settings your fan has, the easier it is to find your optimum comfort level. You’ll need at least three – more than that and testers found there weren’t always noticeable difference.

There are a few tricks you can use to maximise your fan’s effectiveness, too. Place it by an open window to help circulate cooler air from outside. Or try the ice hack – pop a bucket filled with ice (cold water also works) in front of your fan and, voila, you’ve got a makeshift AC.

If you plan on having your fan directed exclusively at you, then its range of movement doesn't matter much. But if sharing is caring, then look for a fan that can oscillate between at least a couple of people.

Well, some fans are certainly a lot quieter than others! Look for a night mode as this should make the fan run more quietly. It also sometimes dims any displays so that light doesn’t cause additional sleep disruption.

Some fans also have other snazzy features – a couple on our list can connect to your smart home, and are voice activated or controlled from an app on your phone. Others multitask, purifying the air in your room as they redistribute it. Hello, clean sleep!

Things get pretty heated in the WH Lab when we test tower fans. Our experts literally sit in a 30 degree room for half an hour and assess how comfortable the fan makes them.

They also analyse the strength of each setting and look at the difference between them by measuring how much air each level blows – a good fan should offer ample speed settings that are all notably different, so you can tailor its output to suit you.

Finally, we carry out decibel tests to find the quietest fans for lulling you to sleep, measure the energy efficiency of each fan and assess its oscillation range, looking for a good distribution of air.

Taking all this into account, we then rank each fan – keep scrolling to find your perfect match.

It will come as little surprise to Airwrap devotees that Dyson also makes one of our dreamiest fans. The sleek silver design is lightweight, meaning it can easily accompany you from room to room. A nifty remote makes it intuitive to use and you get top coverage – 350 degrees’ worth if we’re being precise. You can adjust its movement too, so directing a permanent stream of cool air your way is a breeze.

But, the main reason it’s our best buy is that it scored full marks in our noise test, proving no louder than the background hum in our testing room. And with 10 air speeds (our panel liked its middle settings the most FYI), a night mode and timer, it’s the perfect addition if you need to inject some air into your bedroom at night.

This was our testers' fave when it came to improved comfort. It has 12 air speeds, ranging from a gentle breeze to wind sweeping, while its adjustable rotation can cover a couple of people at once. Plus, it’s designed to alter the air flow in accordance with your room temperature, meaning you shouldn’t need to faff around changing settings much. As a result, the fan notably improved our testers’ comfort levels.

It wasn't quite as quiet on test as the Dyson, but it has a night mode and is straightforward to use. It’s on the bulky side but it’s worth the extra weight reps carrying it around – it’s also an air purifier.

You don’t have to spend big to sleep better – this high-scoring cooler will set you back a little over £30 and had one of the highest wind powers in the lab. This is ideal if you want your bedroom to become something of a wind tunnel. Or use the lower of its three settings if you want something a little less breezy.

It rotates nicely and its lengthy cable is just shy of two metres, meaning it's easy to position just so. Note: it doesn’t have a night mode and wasn’t as quiet as some. But given its price, there's ample change left over for some trusty ear plugs if you’re sensitive to noise.

If you’re worried about a tower fan drying out your skin and rendering your vitamin C serum worthless, then this Dyson is here to help. It’s the brand’s latest tower fan and as well as keeping you cool, it also humidifies (and purifies) the air.

It has 10 air settings and scored nearly full marks with our testers for the comfort it provided in the heat. It was loud on its highest speed setting, but if you’re not a white noise lover, you can activate the night setting for an undisturbed beauty sleep. Testers found both the fan and its accompanying app intuitive to use, making it another sleek all-rounder.

If you like the bladeless look but you’re not on a Dyson budget, then consider this snazzy model. For starters, it’s available in a range of different colourways (we quite like this gold number) and it has ten speed settings so you can customise your breeze.

There’s a timer that will keep it running all night if needed and our testers found it dreamily quiet. Its narrower oscillation range means it doesn’t quite have the moves of some of its pricier counterparts, but you can angle its head more than most for a precise airflow. It can keep you company year-round too, as it doubles as a heater.

Luxuriously, voice command lets you switch this fan on without even leaving the comfort of your bed. Don't worry if you don’t have an Alexa, either – it also has a remote control and an accompanying app, meaning if you need it on for longer than its programmed night mode, switching it back on shouldn’t delay your sleep too much.

Testers praised its three, notably different air flow settings, finding them quiet, even on high. It’s more of a ‘just for one’ fan as it rotates slightly under 80 degrees. But this is the fan tech-y dreams are made of.

Testers found this fan effortless to set up and use, thanks to its clear instructions. They also rated the way you can tilt the body of the fan to direct its air flow more precisely and its strong yet quiet high setting.

It boasts a night mode and air freshening technology (it releases ions to achieve this) making it a good pick for cool air while you dose. It’s on the wobbly side and doesn’t have a huge oscillation range. But it will suit avid weather watchers – a quick glance at the fan’s digital display tells you the room temp.

Weighing in at a slight 3.8kg, this fan is perfect if you want one you can cart from your bedroom (it has a night mode) to your living room and back, without it feeling like strength training. It also has a nifty handle and decent length cable.

It’s not the most premium fan (so no voice control here) but it belts out air more powerfully than any other fan on test. While loud on high, crucially, it was quiet on its lower settings and our testers found it made a huge difference to their comfort on balmy days.

Blossom is our Senior Homes Tester. Passionate about finding the best home products and appliances for our readers, she has tested everything from blenders to pizza ovens. Blossom enjoys delving into the intricacies of products and refining testing protocols for hundreds of items. Innovative items like robot vacuum cleaners and wine coolers are among her favourite tests to date, and her most notable accomplishment is toasting 360 slices of bread in a determined bid to find the best toaster. In her free time, Blossom openly admits to being a music geek and indulges her creative side through crocheting, baking, singing and writing.

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