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MERV Picker
Quick answer: Choose your filter depth, whether a technician has confirmed airflow headroom, and your main priority: protecting equipment, more dust and pet capture, or smoke-season capture. The picker suggests an educational starting MERV range. It caps 1-inch filters at MERV 11 unless headroom is confirmed. It makes no health claims and is not a system design.
The logic
MERV comes from ASHRAE Standard 52.2, summarized by the U.S. EPA: higher numbers capture more particles in the 0.3–10 micron test ranges but usually add resistance. Equipment protection maps to MERV 6–8, more dust capture to 8–11 and smoke-season capture to 11–13. Thin 1-inch filters carry the most resistance per MERV, so without confirmed headroom we stop at 11. Deep 4- and 5-inch media have far more pleated area, so MERV 13 is commonly practical there.
Worked example
A 1-inch slot, unknown headroom and a smoke-season priority returns MERV 11 alone, with a note that a media cabinet or a static-pressure check is the usual path to MERV 13. The same priority with a 4-inch filter returns MERV 11–13.
Illustrative note (2026-10-29): This example was run on 2026-10-29 for illustration.
Limits
This is a teaching aid. Your equipment manual and an HVAC technician's static-pressure reading override it. For health questions, ask a medical professional.