How Many Watts Does an Electric Blanket Use? Sunbeam Specs, Amps and kWh

An electric blanket is one of the smallest heating loads in a house. It warms you directly through thin heating wires, so it needs about a tenth of what a portable heater does. The label tells you the maximum:

Wattages and timers are from Sunbeam's product listings as of October 2026. A dash means the listing didn't state a timer. Your blanket's own label is the figure that counts.

Virginia Cooperative Extension's appliance wattage table, a general guide rather than a model figure, lists an electric blanket at 60 watts for a single and 100 watts for a double. That lines up with the Sunbeam listings.

Why the label is a ceiling, not a running figure

The wattage on the label is the most the blanket can draw. Virginia Cooperative Extension makes the general point: when an appliance has a range of settings, what it actually uses depends on the setting. A blanket with 10 or 12 heat settings draws its full rating on the highest one. On lower settings it uses less.

Auto shut-off also caps the hours. Sunbeam lists 12-hour timers on its Greystone and twin microplush blankets and its Dual Control Comfort mattress pad, a 10-hour timer on its connected queen blanket, and 4-hour timers on throws meant for the couch.

Amps: well under one

Divide watts by volts. On a standard 120-volt outlet:

• 70 W ≈ 0.58 amps
• 100 W ≈ 0.83 amps
• 110 W ≈ 0.92 amps

Queen and king mattress pads with dual controllers, one for each side, are listed at 110 watts. If you run two separate blankets on one bedroom circuit, add them. Either way it is a small fraction of a 15-amp circuit. The watts to amps calculator converts any figure.

Energy per night: watts × hours

Virginia Cooperative Extension's formula is the standard one: wattage × hours used per day ÷ 1,000 = daily kWh.

As an illustration only, at the full listed wattage:

That is the worst case for those hours. Lower settings, or preheating the bed and switching off, use less. The watts to kWh calculator handles any wattage, run time and rate.

Electric blanket vs space heater vs furnace

• An electric blanket heats the bed: about 60 to 110 watts by the figures above.
• A portable space heater heats a room: 750 to 1,500 watts in the extension table. See how many watts a space heater uses.
• A gas furnace heats the house with gas but needs a few hundred watts of electricity for its blower. See how many watts a furnace uses.

Electric blankets on a home battery

In a winter outage, an electric blanket is one of the most efficient ways to keep people warm on stored energy:

• It is tiny. About 100 watts, compared with an inverter rated in kilowatts.
• It has no motor. A blanket heats with resistance wire, so there is no motor starting surge to plan for, unlike a furnace blower or sump pump.
• It depends on the outlet. The bedroom receptacle circuit has to be on the battery's critical-load panel. Otherwise the blanket is off with the rest of the house.

As an illustration, a 100-watt blanket at full heat for 8 hours uses 0.8 kWh. The same 8 hours of a 250-watt furnace blower, the illustration in the furnace post, is 2 kWh. Lower blanket settings use less. Refrigeration, a furnace blower, networking and medical equipment usually share the list, as what a critical load panel is explains. The critical load panel planner tests a list of circuits against an inverter's continuous and surge ratings.

Getting your own number

1. The label on the cord or controller: watts and volts.
2. The setting you actually use: full heat draws the rated wattage; lower settings use less.
3. The auto shut-off timer: the most hours it can run in one go.
4. Your electric bill: the rate per kWh.

When bedroom circuits are part of a battery backup plan, they are listed and checked during design on the home battery and backup projects Seamless Home coordinates. Get a free estimate to start. Coverage is confirmed per service area rather than promised as blanket availability.