Nigerians search for pressing iron wattage more than almost any other specification on any appliance.

That is not idle curiosity. It is people who have tripped a breaker, melted an extension box, or watched their meter run and want to understand why.

A pressing iron is one of the heaviest single loads in a normal home. It converts electricity directly into heat, which is the least efficient thing electricity can be asked to do, and no clever design avoids it.

What the wattage actually buys

Higher wattage does not mean hotter. The thermostat decides temperature, and a 1,000W iron and a 2,000W iron both reach the same setting.

What higher wattage buys is recovery.

As you press, the soleplate gives up heat to the fabric and cools. A higher-wattage element puts that heat back faster, so the iron holds its temperature through a stack of clothes instead of fading after four shirts.

For a household that is a convenience. For a laundry or a tailoring shop working all day, it is the difference between a machine that keeps up and one that does not.

Do not run this on an inverter

Worth saying plainly, because people try.

A pressing iron on a battery bank will flatten it faster than everything else in the house combined, and no realistic domestic inverter arrangement makes it sensible.

The same caution applies to extension boxes. An iron plugged into a light-duty board is the classic cause of a melted socket, and one of the more common household electrical fires here. Iron from a wall socket, on a properly rated circuit.

Dry or steam

	Dry iron	Steam iron
Mechanism	Heat and pressure only	Heat plus moisture, which relaxes the fibres
Best on	Cotton, native wear, heavy fabrics, starched items	Shirts, linen, blends, anything creased hard
Water quality	Irrelevant	Matters a great deal. Hard water scales the chamber.
Maintenance	Almost none	Descaling, a self-clean cycle, and eventually it leaks
Nigerian reality	Simpler, more durable, still the bigger seller	Faster on difficult creases, more to go wrong

The honest position is that dry irons remain the more sensible buy for a great many Nigerian households. Less to fail, no water to think about. Steam wins where speed matters and the water is reasonable.

One caution on steam. The water going in decides the life of the machine. Hard water leaves scale that blocks the steam holes and eventually stains the clothes the iron was bought to press. If you sell steam irons, sell the descaling advice with them.

Our electric dry and steam irons cover both, specified for households, tailoring shops and commercial laundry, which are three quite different duty cycles.

The soleplate, and the parts that matter more

Non-stick coating is cheapest, glides well when new, and the coating wears. Fine for light use. Stainless steel is durable and easy to keep clean, and it is the sensible default. Ceramic distributes heat evenly and glides best, and costs more.

Whichever it is, the specifications deciding whether the product is safe sit elsewhere. A reliable thermostat. An independent thermal cut-out for when the thermostat fails. And auto shut-off, which is a genuine fire prevention feature in a country where power returns unannounced and finds an iron face-down on a shirt.

Buying for resale

Three segments, buying differently.

Households want a reliable dry iron at a fair price. Tailoring shops want something heavier that holds temperature through a working day. Commercial laundries want the highest wattage they can wire for and will pay for durability.

The commercial segment is worth pursuing, because they replace machines regularly and buy several at a time. They also care about the cord, which is where cheap irons fail. Constant flexing at the point where the cable leaves the body, in a hot environment, is a demanding job for a cable and the cheapest place to save money.

Before the order

Built for 230V at 50Hz on the BS 1363 plug, because a 110V iron is useless here and looks identical in a listing. SONCAP certification arranged at origin. And on a high-current heating appliance, inspecting the thermostat, the thermal cut-out and the cable entry before shipment is not an optional extra.

Tell us the market

Households, tailoring, or commercial laundry, and how many units. We will match wattage and soleplate to the duty cycle, confirm the safety cut-outs with the supplier, and give you the landed cost per unit in naira with every line itemised.

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