How many watts does a hair dryer use?
Hair dryers sold in the US run at **1200 to 1875 watts**, and 1875 is effectively the ceiling: a 15-amp household circuit will not carry much more. The figure is printed on the appliance, and for this kind of device that number is trustworthy — a hair dryer is a resistive heater with a fan, so what goes in comes out as heat.
Work it out with your own tariff
Minutes a day
Watts, from the label on yours
Your rate, cents per kWh
| Period | Cost | Time counted |
|---|---|---|
| One minute | $0.0038 | 1 minute |
| Your daily use | $0.0038 | 1 minute a day |
| A month | $0.11 | × 30 days |
| A year | $1.37 | × 365 days |
1875 W × 1 min ÷ 60 ÷ 1000 = 0.0313 kWh × 12¢ = $0.0038 a day.
Minutes are counted per day in total, not per use. If you use it three times a day for two minutes, that is six. The distinction matters because multiplying one use by 365 assumes you use it once a day, and most pages that quote a yearly figure never say which they did. 1200-1875 W covers what is printed on hair dryers sold in the US, where 1875 W is effectively the ceiling because a 15-amp household circuit will not carry much more. A hair dryer is a resistive heater with a fan, so the rating on the appliance is what it draws. Rate defaults to 18.44¢ (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026-05).
Ten minutes a day costs the same as washing all your clothes
This is the comparison worth sitting with. At 1875 watts, ten minutes a day for a year comes to about $21.
A washing machine, from the certified data on this site, uses 110 kWh a year — about $20.
So the appliance you hold for ten minutes costs the same to run as the one that washes everything you own. Not because the hair dryer is inefficient, but because 1875 watts is an enormous draw and duration is the only thing holding the total down.
The lesson that applies to every page here
Watts alone tell you nothing about cost. A hair dryer draws roughly twenty times what a television does and costs less to run, because one runs for ten minutes and the other for four hours.
This is why every figure on this site comes with the time attached, and why a page that answers "how many watts" without answering "for how long" has answered half the question.
What it costs at your own numbers
Set the watts from the label and the minutes below. Count minutes per day in total: if two people in the house use it, that is both.
On the cool setting it is a fan
Most of the rating is the heating element. With the heat off, a hair dryer draws a small fraction of its rated power — the motor only. We do not publish a figure for it because it is not printed on the appliance and nobody certifies it, but the direction is not in doubt: the cool setting costs a fraction of the hot one, and finishing on cool is the cheapest change available here.
What this does not account for
No source, and none is needed. The figure is the rating printed on your appliance. A resistive heater turns essentially all its electricity into heat, so the plate is the draw — unlike a microwave, where the visible number is the wrong one.
Minutes are per day in total, not per use. Two people, two uses. Multiplying a single use by 365 is the common error and it halves or doubles the answer depending on the household.
The cool setting is not covered. With the element off the draw is a small fraction of the rating, but that fraction is not published and we do not estimate it.
Professional and travel dryers sit outside this range. Salon models can exceed 1875 W on other circuits, and dual-voltage travel dryers are often far below it. Read the plate rather than assuming the range here covers yours.
Worth reading next
Sources
- 01Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3 — average price of electricity to ultimate customersU.S. Energy Information Administration ·
How these figures are produced: see our methodology.
Figures are calculated from published wattages and a published tariff, both dated above. They are good for comparing devices, not for predicting your bill: your rate, settings and usage all differ.