Nothing beats rolling one up and taking a hit after a long day. But for some of us, smoking weed is more akin to a covert operation than the relaxing experience it should be. Despite a recent wind of change bringing in new, more open-minded attitudes and laws surrounding smoking pot, it’s still far from being widely accepted in mainstream society.
Whether you are concerned about your neighbors, family, or even law enforcement catching the scent of your joint, or perhaps you’re just tired of your home smelling stale after smoking weed, we’ve put together some top tips on how to smoke indoors without leaving a trace.
In order to smoke weed indoors without leaving a smell, you will need to take a few precautionary steps before and after lighting a joint. By finding the ideal space, preparing the room, and removing smoke once you’ve finished, you can be confident you will eradicate any unwanted odor and keep your space feeling fresh.
Before you smoke: How to choose the best area for smoking weed indoors
First things first, you’ll need to find the perfect pot-smoking spot. Now I know most of you will be heading straight to the comfiest seat in the house, ready to relax in style within close proximity to both the TV and fridge. However, this probably isn’t going to help keep your space odor-free.
In order to prevent smells from traveling around the house, follow these tips to find the best area for smoking weed indoors.
1. Consider the location of the room and who else might use it
If you’re trying to smoke without affecting other people in your household or alerting an angsty neighbor, avoid communal areas or places where smoke will travel into other people’s personal space. This common courtesy is rule number one when smoking as the last thing you want to do when getting high is annoy the people around you.
Designate a specific smoke-friendly room and only light up in there to limit the smell of weed taking over the whole house.
2. Be aware of your surroundings
Scan any potential room and avoid areas with lots of soft furnishings or pristine white walls. Carpets, drapes or throws will absorb odors over time and will begin to stink of weed smoke. While walls and ceilings that are painted white can soon become discolored, which is the first thing your landlord will notice, so you can kiss your security deposit goodbye.
3. Head to the bathroom
This room is almost tailor-made for smoking indoors. As most bathrooms have tiled walls or a linoleum floor, you can rest assured these surfaces won’t absorb odors. As bathrooms have excellent ventilation too, just switch on the extractor fan or open the window and you’re good to go.
Run the shower and allow the room to steam up, this will help quash smoke and minimize any odor.
While you smoke: How to prepare the room before lighting a joint inside
Once you’ve found the ideal spot, it’s now time to take a couple of precautionary measures to minimize the spread of smoke and ensure you don’t give the game away.
1. Ventilate the space
Nothing rids odors as effectively as flooding the room with fresh air. Open any windows and doors within your immediate vicinity to increase airflow and allow smoke to dissipate.
When smoking, try to be as close to the window or door as possible and exhale directly outside.
2. Close interior air vents
Your HVAC system is responsible for circulating air throughout your home. So when smoke is present indoors, it can enter the duct system and travel from room to room. By closing the vent in the specific room where you are smoking, you will isolate any odor to that room. Most vents have a small sliding mechanism, which allows you to easily open and close the vent.
3. Seal gaps between doorways
If you want to stop smoke from spreading from one room to another, temporarily place a rolled-up towel at the base of your doorway. This will block a good section of space where smoke and odors would otherwise pass through.
Damp the towel slightly before placing it at the door for extra odor absorption.
After you smoke: How to get rid of weed smells after smoking indoors
Admittedly, the last thing you’ll want to do is carry out more precautionary steps once you’ve smoked your joint. But it’s important to rid the room of any smoke before it spreads, or seeps into any soft furnishings. So, before you relax, follow these quick, final steps to rid your room of weed smoke.
1. Turn on your air purifier
When it comes to removing traces of weed smoke, an air purifier recommended for weed should be your first port of call. Ensure it comes with a heavy-loaded Activated Carbon filter, which targets volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as odors, along with a HEPA filter which in turn helps to remove harmful smoke toxins.
Be sure to leave the purifier running for an hour or two so it can carry out multiple air cycles.
2. Invest in Activated Charcoal bags
Much like the filter in your air purifier, Activated Charcoal bags are filled with carbon that adsorbs gasses and odors, eradicating them from your space. These offer an excellent, budget-friendly alternative, however, they are only effective in an immediate range as they have no means to circulate the air.
Place numerous bags around the room and target desk fans towards them to increase their efficiency.
3. Remove the evidence
Leaving the end of joints to sit in your ashtray will only continue to emit odors into your home. Ensure they are stubbed out and thrown away as soon as you’re finished to cut smells off at the source. Likewise, pack away all your weed in airtight containers to stop smells spreading.
Invest in a sealable ashtray so all you have to do is pop the lid on until you are ready to dispose of any waste.
4. Light a scented candle or use an essential oil diffuser
Although these will only temporarily mask the smell, they offer a short-term solution to covering up the smell of weed, which is especially useful if you are expecting visitors.
Our favorite air purifiers for weed smoke
Budget option: Levoit 300S
The Levoit Core 300S is one of our favorite budget air purifiers on the market today. At just under $150, this purifier gives rival units that cost twice as much a run for their money. Thanks to the H13 HEPA plus a high efficiency Activated Carbon filter, this purifier will do an excellent job at removing unwanted odors, whilst also tackling the harmful toxins created when burning combustibles, such as weed.
This purifier is a perfect option for small-medium-sized rooms, up to 219 sq. ft, while its compact and lightweight design make it super easy to transport around the home to target different spaces. The capacitive controls are simple to operate and we also see smart features included that are not often found at the price range, such as an air quality indicator, 24-hour timer and Levoit app, allowing you to control the purifier from your phone.
Best for most people: Alen BreatheSmart 45i
If you’re looking for a reliable, mid-range purifier that offers a real bang for its buck, then look no further than the Alen BreatheSmart 45i. Designed for use in spaces up to 800 sq. ft., this purifier boasts an impressive CADR rating of 245, whilst removing 99.99% of particles as small as 0.1 micron.
With four filters to choose from, including their highly rated, heavy smoke filter that comes loaded with a huge 2.3 lbs of Activated Carbon to specifically eliminate odor and toxins emitted when smoking. The BreatheSmart 45i also comes with a range of smart features such as an Auto mode, to monitor the air and adjust the fan speeds accordingly and an excellent sleep setting where the unit creates a whisper-quiet pink noise hum that will actually improve your sleep.
Best for large spaces: Levoit Core 600S
For larger spaces, the Levoit Core 600S has all your air purification needs covered. As the largest of the Core range, this unit comes with all the fantastic features and top spec its predecessors do, however with much larger fans and filters for enhanced performance. So much so, it received an amazing CADR score of 410.
This performance is driven by Levoit’s patented VortexAir technology, which allows the unit to purify the air in a 635 ft² room five times an hour, making it ideal for revitalizing your space after smoking weed. This purifier certainly lived up to the hype around it during our real-world tests, becoming the fastest purifier we’ve tested to completely clear our test bedroom of pollutants, making it our top recommendation for larger rooms.
Frequently asked questions about smoking weed indoors
Trying to secretly smoke in your room is probably going to end in you getting busted, despite how good our odor-eliminating advice is 😉. So it’s best to be open and honest from the outset or smoke elsewhere.
However, if you are hell-bent on secretly smoking indoors, ensure you maximize ventilation and airflow in your space, either by opening a window or utilizing an air purifier. Remember smoke travels easily and its odor can become absorbed by your bedding, carpet or drapes so be sure to block any spaces where smoke could escape into the rest of the home and eradicate any reminisce of smoke right away. It’s probably best to avoid masking the odor with air freshener too, as this might draw unwanted attention.
This will vary depending on the room you are in and how you smoke weed. If your space is full of soft furnishings and you’ve smoked with the windows closed, you can expect the odor to linger a lot longer than if you smoked in a well-ventilated kitchen or bathroom.
Whether you smoke a joint, bong, or pipe will also affect the longevity of lingering odors too. A pipe or bong uses relatively small amounts of combustible material, so they will emit less odor than a joint (especially if rolled using tobacco).
Generally speaking, if you smoke a joint or two indoors without following our odor-busting advice, the smell can remain for a day or two before returning back to normal. Regular smoking indoors will contribute to a constant odor in your home, which smokers often become nose blind to.
Vaping is much more odor-friendly than smoking combustible joints, bongs or pipes. Providing a more discreet way to smoke. As vapor is less dense than smoke, it dissipates far quicker so won’t leave as much of a lingering smell in your home. However, over time it can attach to soft furnishings and belongings and may pose more of an odor issue in the long run. Be sure to check out our top air purifiers for vaping to keep your home smelling fresh for longer. If its cigarette smoke as well then look at higher powered units in our list of the best air purifiers for smokers.
Final thoughts
The lingering odor left from smoking weed can turn your home into a stale, smelly environment. Not to mention it can be a nuisance to your family, roommates or neighbors. By increasing natural ventilation or investing in an air purifier loaded with Activated Carbon filters, you can dramatically reduce any unwanted odor and create a fresher environment.
It’s important to state that the smoke produced from burning weed has been shown to contain many of the same toxins, irritants, and carcinogens as tobacco smoke. Prolonged exposure or persistent inhalation of weed smoke can result in serious health complications, where the smell it creates will be the last of your worries. However, if you are going to continue smoking weed, by following each of our top 10 tips, you will not only reduce the odor but lower the risk of secondhand smoke for those around you.
