Awful April is here, and with it a slew of price rises will hit households over the next year, from water to council tax, broadband and phone bills to electricity and gas. And with prices for gas and electricity increasing by 6.4% from April 1, it means the cost of running every appliance in our house will also increase by 6.4%, from ovens and air fryers to TVs, fridges and showers - which will now cost as much as £123 to £177 per year for a 10-minute shower each day from a powerful shower.

From April, households will pay an average of £1,849 for gas and electricity bills for a typical dual-fuel household thanks to the new price cap set by Ofcom. But of course, that’s just an illustration for an average figure, so if you use more, you’ll pay more, and the final yearly bill you’ve paid is the total cost of every appliance and all your heating for the year added together, plus the standing charges.

Power showers, which use electricity to heat the water rather than gas from your central heating boiler, are notoriously expensive to run, but they are usually only used for a few minutes at a time.

Based on the April price cap, electric showers will cost between 0.34p per 10 minutes and 0.49p per 10 minutes of use, depending on how powerful the shower is.

A low-energy shower, rated for 7.5kWh, costs 0.34p for 10 minutes, whereas a high power 10.8kWh shower uses 0.49p for 10 minutes.

According to Sust-it.net, which has calculated the costs of running each type of shower, it costs 0.41p for 10 minutes using a middle-of-the-road 9kWh shower.

If you took a 10-minute shower every day, that would cost you £2.84 per week. Over a year, that means it costs £147.99 to shower for 10 minutes every day for a year.

The cheapest shower at 7.5kWh costs £123.23 per year, and the most expensive £177.59 per year, again each for a 10-minute shower per day.

Sust-it says: “Electric showers are rated in Kilowatts (kW). Find out the specification of your shower, then use our energy calculator to see how much it will cost to run per day, week or a year.

“Based on a 10-minute shower every day. Electricity costs are calculated using the UK Price Cap (April 2025) electricity rate of £0.27 per kWh (incl. VAT).”

There are two key ways to reduce your shower costs: showering for five minutes instead of 10 would cut the cost in half.

Then, switching to a fixed deal would see your costs lowered as well. The price cap is the price you pay if you’re on a standard variable tariff, as roughly 60% to 70% of UK households currently are according to Martin Lewis.

But if you switch to a fixed tariff, you can reduce your energy bills by as much as 13%, as some deals are currently up to 13% cheaper than this April’s cap.