What does a hair dryer cost to run?
One of the highest-wattage things you own, and one of the cheapest to run — because you use it for minutes, not hours.
Typical model is rated 2,000W
Price cap is 26.11p
3p per use, 364 uses a year, 47 kWh in total — about £1 a month.
A hair dryer pulls up to 2kW, which sounds alarming, but a five-minute dry uses only a sixth of a kilowatt-hour. Even used every day the yearly cost is small. As with kettles and toasters, the wattage is scary and the run time is the number that actually counts.
There is little to optimise — it is already cheap. A more powerful dryer that finishes the job faster can even use slightly less overall, and towel-drying first shortens the time the motor runs.
The short answer: Trivial to run despite the wattage. Not worth worrying about.
What actually helps
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This is the small stuff
Every appliance on this site put together is usually less than a third of a typical energy bill. Heating the house is the rest of it. If the numbers here bothered you, the number that actually matters is what your heating costs — and whether a heat pump would make it better or worse in your particular house.
Work out your heating costOther appliances
Energy figures checked 2026-08-26. Electricity priced at the Ofgem cap for 1 July – 30 September 2026. Your own machine and tariff will differ — put your figures in above.