If your windows are regularly covered in water droplets first thing in the morning, this is almost always condensation forming overnight rather than a fault with the windows themselves. It’s one of the most common moisture problems in UK homes, and it often appears suddenly when the weather turns colder.
Before assuming there’s a bigger damp issue, it’s worth understanding what’s actually happening in the air overnight and why windows are usually the first place moisture shows itself. If you’re unsure whether this is condensation or something else, it can help to step back and check the wider picture using a condensation diagnosis before trying to fix it.
What’s actually happening overnight
Warm air can hold a lot of moisture. During the evening, moisture builds up naturally from breathing, cooking earlier in the day, showers, and general household activity. Overnight, outside temperatures drop and the window glass cools faster than walls or ceilings.
Glass is usually the coldest surface in a bedroom. When warm, moisture-laden air touches that cold surface, the moisture can no longer stay suspended in the air, so it turns back into liquid water on the glass. This is why windows are often wet in the morning but dry out later once the heating comes on.
The most common reasons it keeps happening
In most homes, this pattern comes down to a combination of moisture building up while you sleep, limited overnight ventilation, and the bedroom cooling down too much compared to the rest of the house. Bedrooms are particularly prone because doors are shut and moisture from breathing has nowhere to go.
Turning the heating off completely overnight often makes this worse, not better. Colder glass needs less moisture to start condensing, so even normal humidity levels can lead to dripping windows by morning.
Why common fixes usually don’t work
Wiping the windows dry removes the visible water but doesn’t change the moisture level in the air. Leaving a window wide open for a short time during the day doesn’t help much if the room is sealed again overnight. Mould sprays treat what grows afterwards, not the conditions that caused the moisture.
Many people also assume new windows are to blame. In reality, newer windows often seal the room better, which means moisture that used to leak out through draughts now stays indoors.
What usually helps first
The least disruptive improvement is reducing how much moisture builds up before bedtime and allowing a small amount of controlled airflow overnight. Using existing ventilation properly, avoiding late-evening clothes drying indoors, and keeping bedroom temperatures steadier can all reduce morning condensation.
The aim isn’t to make the room cold or draughty, but to stop moisture building up faster than it can escape.
When to look deeper
If windows stay wet well into the afternoon, if walls or ceilings are damp to the touch, or if moisture appears in warm weather as well as winter, it’s worth reassessing whether condensation alone explains what you’re seeing. In some homes, this pattern overlaps with whole-house condensation, where background moisture levels stay high throughout the property.
In summary, wet windows in the morning usually reflect overnight moisture meeting cold glass. Once you focus on moisture build-up and surface temperature rather than the window itself, the pattern becomes much easier to manage. If you want a broader explanation of how condensation, mould, and damp relate to one another, the condensation, mould and damp guide puts this issue into wider context.