Nursery Room Thermometers Buyer's Guide 2026: The £24 Vicks Also Reads Humidity, the £28 Purflo Reads in the Dark

COMPARISON · SAFE & SOUND

The heating went on this week in a lot of UK homes, and with it comes the question every new parent asks at least once a night: is the nursery too warm? The usual safe sleep advice is to keep a baby's room somewhere between 16°C and 20°C, which sounds simple until you realise most of us have no idea what temperature our bedrooms actually sit at once the radiators kick in. A hand on the wall or a guess from the thermostat in the hallway won't tell you.

That is the whole job of a nursery room thermometer, and you don't need to spend much to get one. What surprised us when we lined up the three we'd point most parents to is how differently they go about that one job. The cheapest, at around £14, is really a bath thermometer that also reads the room. The £24 option isn't a baby product at all, it's a hygrometer that tells you how dry the air has gone as well as how warm. And the £28 one doesn't show you a number at all: it just glows a colour you can read from the doorway without switching a light on.

So this isn't a "spend more, get more" guide. Each price point buys a different answer to a different worry. Below we've pulled together what parents tell us about living with each one through a winter of night feeds, checked the published specs, and been honest about the bits that annoy people after the first month.

Lil' Bubba's verdicts

• Best Overall for heating season: Vicks 2-in-1 Hygrometer and Thermometer V70 · 8.0/10 - the only one of the three that also tells you when the heating has dried the air out
• Best Value: Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature Bath & Room Thermometer · 7.5/10 - one £14 gadget that covers bath water and the nursery
• Best for checking without a light on: Purflo Starlight Colour-Changing Room Thermometer · 7.0/10 - a soft colour you can read from the door at 3am, no wires

Quick comparison

Product	Price	Measures	How you read it	Power	Rating
Tommee Tippee Bath & Room	from £13.99	Room and bath water temperature	Small LCD, tap to wake; red LED if water is over 39°C	Button cell (included)
Vicks V70	£24.43	Room temperature and relative humidity	Digital display, no glow or night light	1 x AAA (included)
Purflo Starlight	£28	Room temperature only	Colour glow: blue, green, amber, red	Rechargeable, micro USB

How we picked the 3

We started from the room thermometers BubsNest families actually add to their Nests and narrowed them to products that are in stock with UK retailers right now. We then split them by price into a budget, a mid-range and a premium tier, and deliberately picked one from each that does the job in a different way, so the guide answers "which type suits me" rather than repeating the same gadget at three prices. For each one we read the published specs, compared them against the 16-20°C range most parents are working to, and gathered what parents tell us about using them day to day. Nobody paid to be included and the ratings are ours.

If you read our nursery room thermometer roundup earlier this year, this guide is the narrower follow-up: three tiers, three approaches, and a clear call on who should buy which. For the bigger picture on dressing your baby for the temperature you find, our room temperature and TOG guide picks up where this one stops.

What to look for in a nursery room thermometer

A display you can read when it matters. The moment you most want to check the temperature is in the middle of the night with the light off and a baby half asleep. A small LCD that needs a lamp on is fine for a daytime check; a colour glow is easier at 3am. Decide which of those you'll actually do.

Where it sits, not just what it says. Any thermometer reads the air around it. Put it on a windowsill, beside a radiator or in direct sun and it will tell you about that spot, not about the cot. Place it at roughly cot-mattress height, away from heat sources and draughts, and give it a few minutes to settle after you move it.

Whether humidity matters to you. Central heating dries the air, and very dry rooms are associated with stuffy noses and dry skin. A hygrometer that shows relative humidity helps you decide whether a humidifier is worth it, and whether the one you have is doing anything. If your home is damp rather than dry, it'll show that too, which matters for condensation and mould.

Power and wires. Battery or rechargeable units can sit anywhere without a cable trailing near the cot. Plug-in night-light thermometers stay lit but bring a wire into the room. Check how easy the battery is to change, because a thermometer that dies quietly in January is no use.

What it is not. None of these are medical thermometers and none of them measure your baby. They tell you about the room so you can choose layers and sleeping bag TOG sensibly. For checking a temperature on your baby, you need a separate digital or ear thermometer.

1. Vicks 2-in-1 Hygrometer and Thermometer V70 / 10 · Best for heating season

The Vicks V70 is the odd one out in this guide because it was never designed as a baby product. It's a compact, battery-powered hygrometer that shows two numbers: the room temperature (in Celsius or Fahrenheit) and the relative humidity as a percentage. Vicks pitches it around keeping indoor air between 40% and 60% humidity, which is the range generally considered comfortable for breathing and skin.

For a nursery in winter, that second number is the reason to buy it. Once the heating is on, plenty of parents find the room is comfortably within the 16-20°C range but the air has dropped well below 40%, and the first sign is a baby who sounds bunged up every morning. Being able to see that, rather than guess at it, is genuinely useful, and it's the only thermometer at this price that does it.

What parents love

• Two readings in one. Temperature and humidity side by side on one display, so a stuffy morning has an obvious first thing to check: was the air simply too dry overnight?
• Shows whether a humidifier is earning its keep. Because it's portable you can move it from room to room and see whether running a humidifier actually changes anything, or whether it's just steaming up the window.
• Simple, no app, no setup. It comes with its AAA battery included, so it's working out of the box. There's nothing to pair and nothing to charge.
• Useful beyond the baby years. Once the nursery years are over it's just as handy in a bedroom or a damp-prone room, so it doesn't end up in a drawer.

What to know before you buy

• Not made for reading in the dark. There's no colour glow or night-light function, so a 3am check means a torch or a lamp.
• Can't be calibrated. Like most budget hygrometers, it isn't adjustable. One owner who tested theirs against a reference found the humidity within a few percentage points, which is fine for spotting a dry room but not a lab instrument.
• Not nursery styled. It looks like a household gadget, because it is. If you want something that matches the cot, this isn't it.

Best for

• Homes with central heating that runs most of the evening
• Babies who often wake congested or have dry skin
• Parents deciding whether to buy, or keep running, a humidifier
• Anyone who'd rather see real numbers than a colour

2. Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature Bath & Room Thermometer / 10 · Best value

This is the one you'll see in most hospital bag lists, and at around £14 it's easy to see why. The star-shaped unit floats in the bath to check the water and then sits on a small stand in the nursery to read the room. Give it a gentle tap to wake the display and it shows the temperature within a few seconds. In the bath, a red LED lights up if the water is above 39°C, which is a handy safety net when you're running a bath one-handed.

As a room thermometer it does the basics well: a clear number, a sensible size, and nothing plugged in. The compromise is that it's built around the bath first. The screen is small and on the dim side, and you have to wake it, so it's a "check when you walk in" device rather than something you glance at from the bed.

What parents love

• Two jobs for the price of one. Bath water and nursery in one gadget, which is the main reason it's on so many lists. One parent who used it in both places told us: 'the room reading matched our baby monitor', which is reassuring for a £14 unit.
• The red warning light. The LED for water over 39°C is the feature parents mention most, especially in the newborn weeks when you're second-guessing everything.
• Quick to read. A tap wakes it and the number appears in seconds, so it fits into the routine without fuss.
• Cheap and widely stocked. It's easy to find, and easy to replace if it goes missing in a nappy bag.

What to know before you buy

• Dim, small screen. The most common complaint. In a dim nursery it can be hard to read without a light on.
• The stand doesn't lock on. The star sits in its stand rather than clipping in, so a curious toddler can knock it off a shelf.
• Room reading is secondary. If it lives in the bathroom between baths, it isn't telling you anything about the nursery. Parents who want a constant nursery reading often end up buying a second one.

Best for

• First-time parents on a tight budget
• Smaller homes where fewer gadgets is the goal
• Anyone nervous about bath water temperature in the early weeks
• A quick, cheap gift for a baby shower

3. Purflo Starlight Colour-Changing Room Thermometer / 10 · Best for night checks

The Purflo Starlight takes the opposite approach to the Vicks: no numbers, just a soft coloured glow. Blue means the room is too cold, green means it's about right, amber means it's getting too warm and red means too hot. Retailers list the bands as roughly under 14°C for blue, 15-20°C for green, 21-26°C for amber and 27°C and above for red. It runs on a built-in rechargeable battery charged by micro USB, so there's no cable trailing near the cot once it's charged.

The point is the 3am check. You can open the nursery door, see green, and go back to bed without switching a light on or picking anything up. For a lot of parents, that's worth the extra few pounds on its own.

What parents love

• Readable from the doorway. Green, amber or red is visible from across the room. One parent put it best: 'simple, and good value if you just want a basic room thermometer'.
• No wires. The rechargeable battery means you can put it on a shelf near the cot without a cable to worry about.
• Doubles as a gentle glow. It gives off a soft light, so for some families it can stand in for a separate night light during feeds.
• Looks the part. It's a soft, rounded shape that fits a nursery far better than a household gadget.

What to know before you buy

• The green band starts a degree low. Green begins at about 15°C, a little below the 16°C most parents aim for, so a cold room can still show green. If your house runs cold, keep an eye on the edge.
• The light can be too bright for some babies. We hear repeatedly from parents that the glow is brighter than expected, and some move it further from the cot or out of the baby's line of sight.
• Charging niggles. A small number of parents report units that stopped charging, so keep the receipt and test it properly in the first week.

Best for

• Parents who check on the baby several times a night
• Nurseries where you don't want a cable anywhere near the cot
• Anyone who just wants a yes or no, not a decimal point
• Room-sharing parents who don't want to switch on a lamp

What about the Gro Egg?

The Tommee Tippee Gro Egg is still the room thermometer most parents have heard of, and it combines a colour glow with a number on the front, which is a neat middle ground between the Purflo and the Vicks. We left it out of this guide because it plugs into the mains, so it brings a cable into the nursery, and because it doesn't fit cleanly into one of our three tiers once you compare prices across retailers. If you want colour and a number in one and you're happy with a plug, it's worth a look, and we covered it in our earlier roundup.

How to choose

Choose the Vicks V70 if your heating runs for long stretches, your baby often wakes congested, or you're trying to work out whether a humidifier is worth it. It's the only one of the three that tells you about the air as well as the warmth, and those numbers are useful long after the nursery years.

Choose the Tommee Tippee Bath & Room if budget is the priority and you want one gadget for both bath and bedroom. Just accept that the room reading is a quick daytime check rather than something you'll glance at in the night.

Choose the Purflo Starlight if you do a lot of night checks and want an answer without switching a light on. Mind the cooler end of the green band and keep it out of your baby's direct line of sight if the glow seems bright.

Whichever you pick, remember that the reading is a guide to the room, not your baby. Pair it with the right layers and a sleeping bag TOG for the temperature, and check your baby's chest or the back of their neck rather than their hands to see if they're comfortable.

Add it to your Nest

Room thermometers are one of those small, useful things that friends and family are happy to buy. Add your pick to your free BubsNest registry and it sits alongside the bigger nursery buys, with prices from multiple retailers so whoever buys it gets a good deal.