UK households are being urged to use a clothes horse method when doing laundry to slash £50 a year off energy bills.

The Energy Saving Trust warns that using a tumble dryer to dry clothes should be avoided as they are extremely expensive to run.While tumble dryers do help to speed up the laundry drying routine, they can add close to £200 to your bills per year, depending on the type of dryer you use.

According to Home appliance retail giant Curry’s, vented tumble dryers are the most expensive to run at a cost of 1.54 per cycle, amounting to £184.44 per year on average if you use it twice a week.

Instead, households are urged to use a much cheaper – albeit slightly slower – method to dry clothes.

Octopus Energy says air drying your clothes on a clothes horse, or washing line when the weather is warmer, can make you a saving of £50 per year.

A clothes horse allows your laundry to air dry naturally as the water evaporates, so it’s much more energy-efficient compared to a tumble dryer – and it’s much cheaper.

And now is the perfect time to put cost-saving measures in place as households face an energy bills hike from January when Ofgem raises its price cap.

The energy regulator is increasing the cap by 1.2% – or £21 – from the current £1,717 per year for a typical household in England, Wales and Scotland to £1,738 – adding an extra £1.75 per month to bills.

But forecasts suggest the cap could rise even higher thanks to the prospect of reforms adding extra costs, with analysts Cornwall Insight warning it may rise to as much as £1,782, or a 2.5% increase, from January.

The price cap limits the amount an energy supplier can charge for units of gas and electricity and it also impacts the standing charge, which is a daily cost per fuel type set by Ofgem.

The cap isn’t a maximum price households pay for energy as it is based on usage, so those that use more energy will pay more, so it pays to cut costs where you can.