The best heated clothes airers and drying racks

This Black + Decker 3-Tier Heated Airer is a classic electric dryer — a sturdy, vertical body with plenty of hanging space for all kinds of clothing. With a hefty capacity, this can handle big loads of washing.

The three-tier design makes it good for flat drying, laying clothes or towels out across the heated bars, or for hanging lots of items at once on its individual bars. The frame itself is ideal for hooking on extra hangers or items.

Like all great electric dryers, it folds away for easy storage. It also has wheels for moving it easily around the home. As an added bonus, it comes with a cover that slips over the frame and helps speed up the drying process.

If you live in a busy household, or get through laundry quickly, the Hyfive Clothes Airer Drying Rack is perfect: big and multi-faceted enough to handle family-sized washing loads.

It has three levels for hanging clothes plus additional wings for extra garments. It can handle an impressive 15kg of laundry, thanks to a very generous 20 metres of rack space. There’s also a bonus shoe rack built into the bottom of the frame. Ideal for drying your shoes after being out-and-about on rainy days.

Despite the larger size it’s still very convenient for tight spaces. It folds down into an easy-to-store stand. Wheels make it even easier to move around.

The Lakeland Dry:Soon Drying Pod is less a rack than it is a stand, but it’s extremely handy if you’re tight on space or need to move your dryer from room to room. Just fold it up and away you go. And rest assured: Lakeland is the best name in the electric dryer market.

Despite the stand design, it still has a reasonable capacity. A folding coat-style rack at the top is made for hanging items such as shirts, dresses, and jackets. It can handle around 12 full-size items at once.

The design doesn’t compromise its heating efficiency. It comes with a cover (hence the pod name) that circulates air and speeds up the drying process.

For a basic electric drying rack, this Daewoo Foldable Winged Heated Airer is a great choice. It’s a no-frills option, with no extra features, but highly reliable. This rack folds flat and handles a reasonable amount of washing in one go. It can carry 15 kg of laundry, and boasts a total of 11.5 metres of drying space.

For anyone who finds hanging washing to be a chore, the the horizontal winged design design makes things easier. You won't punish your back by bending down to reach lower rungs, or fiddling about with wet socks in hard-to-reach places. The heated bars are at waist height. It has the added convenience of a 1.4 metre cord, giving the flexibility to dry in various spots around the home.

The AMOS Eezy-Dry is a cabinet-style dryer. The fabric cover traps the air to dry your clothes quickly. Not only does that mean its financially efficient, drying for less, it means you can fold the dryer away faster and get that all-important space in the room back. The circulated hot air also prevents your clothes from wrinkling or looking misshapen.

There are other benefits to the fabric cover: It ensures the drying is hygienic and keeps damp clothes hidden away, keeping your home neat and tidy.

This model comes equipped with a drying gadget, which sits at the bottom of rack. It has intelligent touchscreen, allowing you to control and manage the temperature and timer. It also switches off automatically for safety.

OK, so this isn’t quite a drying rack, but it’s in the same electrically-heated ballpark, so we thought you should know about it. The Aerative Heated Clothes Airer Hanger is for anyone who travels for work and needs shirts drying. It was invented specifically to save money on laundrette bills when travelling.

It’s essentially a clothes hanger that blasts air through a patented air duct and dries your shirts (or any clothes you choose to hang) with fast heat dissipation.

The Aerative hanger is hygienic too: It uses an integrated UV sterilisation technology to eliminate up to 99.9% of harmful micro-organisms.

Yes, it’s another product from Lakeland, because when it comes to heated driers, they’re pretty much the electric-powered kings. As far as we’re concerned, the Lakeland Dry:Soon Deluxe is pretty much the best of the best.

It’s big, with a sizeable capacity to keep the laundry routine running in most family homes. As you can see elsewhere on this list, it is possible to get similar (or similarly sized) models for less money, but with Lakeland the quality and performance is guaranteed. That’s why you spend a bit extra.

As an extra bonus, it has a heating timer — which boosts the convenience factor of this dryer even more — and folds away easily.

The Homefront Electric Heated Clothes solves one of life’s great conundrums: Where do you hang all those damp towels? Over the doors? On the radiators? That’s a one-way ticket to creating damp and condensation. But with the Homefront Electric Heated Clothes, you have an easy towel-drying solution.

And it’s not just for towels. Due to the design the space is limited, but it’s great for smaller items of clothing too, from socks to t-shirts.

Homefront also likes to boast about this dryer’s energy efficiency, Indeed, it costs less than 3p per hour to use its heated drying action. It's a great space-saver too. Just push it against the wall and keep it out of the way while drying.