Collection: Water Coolers

Water Coolers for Home and Office

A water cooler earned its reputation in the office as a gathering spot, but the practical appeal is simpler than that. It puts cold, filtered water within reach without anyone opening a refrigerator or waiting on a tap to run cold, and it does the same job in a kitchen, a garage, or a workshop as it does in a break room.

Coolers fall into two broad types. Bottled units take a standard bottle inverted into the top, which makes them easy to place anywhere with a power outlet and easy to move later. Point of use models connect directly to the water line and filter what comes through, so there are no bottles to store, lift, or reorder. Each style suits a different situation, and the choice usually comes down to plumbing access and how much water gets drawn in a day.

Volume is the other deciding factor. A small office or a household is generally well served by a bottled cooler, since a bottle lasts long enough that changing it stays a minor chore. A busy floor with a steady stream of people through the day runs a bottled unit dry quickly, and a plumbed model that draws continuously from the supply line is the more practical fit.

Format matters as well. Countertop coolers save floor space where a counter or a table is already available, which suits a small break room or a kitchen with an open stretch of counter, while freestanding units hold larger reservoirs and often add a hot tap for tea, instant coffee, and soup. Cold only, cold and hot, and cold and room temperature configurations are all common, and a hot tap normally comes with a child safety lock on the dispenser.

Before choosing, measure the space with the door swing and foot traffic in mind, confirm there is an outlet nearby, and check whether the spot has access to a water line if a plumbed model is under consideration. For a bottled cooler, the bottle size a location can comfortably lift and store matters more than any specification on the machine itself, since a full bottle is heavy and gets changed by whoever happens to be standing there.