Drying your hair naturally can take hours if you’ve got long luscious hair, plus it doesn’t deliver the stunning results of a blow dry. It’s so much easier to flick on your hair dryer and be done in 10 or 20 minutes. The only drawback is the power consumption, you might be surprised at the electricity required to run the heating element and electric motor.
Below we will discuss and test hair dryer wattage, explain how to work it out for yourself, and calculate the total electricity required.
How Many Watts is a Hair Dryer?
The average hair dryer uses between 800 and 2000 watts.
The exact number depends on the size and model of your hair dryer. For example, a large professional hair dryer can reach 2000W or more at full power, while the average home device reaches about 1800W.
There are two components drawing power in your hair dryer. The AC motor and the heating element. The heating element is the largest consumer accounting for 70%, while the AC motor used to create airflow uses 30%.
Most hair dryers have multiple heat and speed settings. The highest power (1800 – 2000W) consumption comes at high speed and high heat. This number decreases as you reduce the heat level. If you run your hair dryer with cold air it uses only 400 – 500W.
How to Find Out Your Hair Dryer Wattage
There’s 3 ways you can work out the wattage of a hair dryer.
- Check Product Specification
The quickest way is to look at the hair dryer’s specifications. The watts (W) is usually written on a sticker on the base of the appliance. If not, you can check the user manual or the manufacturer’s website for technical details.
- Use a Wattmeter
A wattmeter is brilliant for getting a live wattage reading and tracking total energy usage of any appliance. You can easily plug it into your hair dryer to get instant information.
I used one to test my hair dryer which gave a live reading of 2161W.
- Wattage Formula or Calculator
If you know the amperage and voltage of your hair dryer you can use this to find the maximum watt rating. Simply use the formula Amps x Volts = Watts. Or you can head over to the ‘Watt Calculator’ to work this out.
Hair Dryer Wattage Examples
Let’s take a look at specific examples of how many watts a hair dryer draws. Below is a collection of modern hair dryers with their listed power ratings.
| Hair Dryer Model | Power Rating (Watts) |
| Revlon Infrared Hair Dryer | 1875 |
| BaBylissPRO Nano Titanium Hair Dryer | 2000 |
| Pro Ionic Salon Hair Dryer | 2000 |
| Remington AC2015 Pro Hair Dryer | 1875 |
| T3 Cura LUXE Hair Dryer | 1875 |
| RUSK Engineering W8less Professional | 2000 |
| Shark HD112BRN Hair Blow Dryer | 1680 |
| INFINITIPRO BY CONAIR | 1875 |
| Conair Double Ceramic Hair Dryer | 1875 |
| John Powerful Ionic Hair Dryer | 2200 |
| Karrong Ionic Hair Dryer | 1800 |
As you can see, the power ratings vary between different hair dryers. So you should take the time to check your own appliance.
How Much Electricity Does a Hair Dryer Use?
You can use hair dryer wattage to work out how much electricity it uses. Plus this can be useful in understanding how much it costs to run your hair dryer.
A watt (W) is a measurement of power at a single point in time. A watt-hour (Wh) is the total amount of electricity used in an hour. For example, a hair dryer drawing 1800W would use 1800Wh when running for an hour.
Happily, electricity bills are recorded in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts. So a 1800W hair dryer running for 1 hour uses 1.8kWh.
In reality, you use a hair dryer for 20 minutes a day. This means a hair dryer running on high uses about 600Wh or 0.6kWh electricity a day. That’s 18kWh a month and 219kWh a year.
That’s an electricity cost of $0.09 a day or $32.85 a year to dry your hair on high power for 20 minutes every day.
Using a Hair Dryer Off-Grid
If you’re planning to use your hair dryer in an off-grid situation like a power outage, or RV, the information above is key. You can install the correct electrical equipment and calculate the runtime.
You can either use a power inverter, portable power station, or generator to generate AC electricity.
To make sure everything runs smoothly you should check two things on this equipment – wattage capacity and total energy capacity.
Your power source, like an inverter, should have a wattage capacity of at least 20% more than your hair dryer. This ensures it will be able to deliver enough power as they are never 100% efficient. You might also consider buying a low wattage hair dryer to reduce the requirements.
Secondly, you need to ensure your energy source, like a battery, has enough energy to run the hair dryer for the required amount of time. As we already know, it will use about 600Wh electricity for each usage. This is the equivalent to 50Ah on a 12V battery.
How Many Watts Does a Hair Dryer Use Summary
I hope you now understand how many watts a hair dryer uses.
One thing is clear: hair dryers guzzle a lot of electricity. It’s the biggest power consumer when it comes to beauty products, far more than hair straighteners or curlers. You’ll need a large inverter or generator to run dry your hair when living off-grid. Plus if you use your appliance every day then you’ll see a noticeable increase in your energy consumption over a year.
