Improving Ventilation in Your Home

Ventilate your home by getting fresh air into your home, filtering the air that is there, and improving air flow. Improving ventilation can help you reduce virus particles in your home and keep COVID-19 from spreading. You may or may not know if someone in your home or if a visitor to your home has COVID-19 or other respiratory viruses. Good ventilation, along with other preventive actions, can help prevent you and others from getting and spreading COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses.

Use this tool to learn how you can decrease the level of COVID-19 virus particles during and after a guest visits your home.

Here are some ways you can improve ventilation in your home. Using as many ways as you can (open windows, use air filters, and turn on fans) will help clear out virus particles in your home faster. You can decrease particles even more by continuing to ventilate after a visitor leaves (for example, an extra hour).

Ventilation: moves air into, out of, or within a room.

Filtration: Traps particles on a filter to remove them from the air.

Bringing fresh, outdoor air into your home helps keep virus particles from accumulating inside.

If your home has a central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC, a system with air ducts that go throughout the home) that has a filter, do the following to help trap virus particles:

Using a portable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) cleaner can provide filtration if you don't have an HVAC system or can improve filtration if you do have an HVAC system. They are the most efficient filters on the market for trapping particles that people exhale when breathing, talking, singing, coughing, and sneezing.

When choosing a HEPA cleaner, select one that is the right size for the room(s). Look for one that has a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) that meets or exceeds the square footage of the room(s) in which it will be used. The larger the CADR, the faster it will clean the air. See EPA's Guide to Air Cleaners in the Home for more information.

With good ventilation, the concentration of virus particles in the air will be lower and they will leave your home faster than with poor ventilation.

Exhaust fans above your stovetop and in your bathroom that vent outdoors can help move air outside. Although some stove exhaust fans don't send the air to the outside, they can still improve air flow and keep virus particles from being concentrated in one place.

The more people inside your home, and the longer they stay, the more virus particles can accumulate.

Watch ASL Video: Improving Ventilation in Your Home