The days of the dedicated thermos flask are long gone. Our range of insulated water bottles mean you can drink cold drinks or hot drinks from the same bottle. They have developed into the perfect multi-taskers to take you from summer to winter with ease. Any insulated drink bottle with a sports lid is only suitable for drinking cold liquid through. The lids are not designed for hot liquids and they will lose too much heat through the lid and the insulation performance will be significantly reduced.

What's the best insulated water bottle for hot liquid?

The TKWide range from Klean Kanteen have a wide mouth and have been designed with multiple lid options available. Some are leakproof so you can carry your bottle in a bag for safe transport. Other lids, like the smoothie cup lid, are not leakproof. They can be used as a stainless steel water bottle for cold drinks, an insulated smoothie cup, and insulated food jar, as travel mugs and a thermos flask, all with the swap of a lid.

If you're travelling to school, work or to picnics and want to carry hot water or coffee, the Cheeki insulated bottles with the screw lids have insulation in the lid, so you'll lose less heat from the top.

What's the best insulated water bottle for cold drinks?

For kids, we love the Classic Kids Insulated Water Bottles from Klean Kanteen. They have sports lids and provide up to 20 hours of iced insulation. Pack one of these with school lunches and the water will stay icy cold in there long after lunch is over. Fill them with some ice cubes if your child needs to refill the bottle during the school day and then the water will be chilled again.

For adults, the Cheeki Active Insulated Water Bottle range has a sports lid with 3 flow options, they're great to take to the gym, your next hiking adventure, to the office or just to use at home.

The Camelbak Eddy are only suitable for cold drinks, but you can always get spares for Camelbak Water Bottles and the Chute lid will fit this bottle if you want to store hot liquid in it. Just drinking coffee? Check out our reusable coffee cup range for a wide selection of reusables.

How does an insulated water bottle keep drinks hot or cold?

Insulated water bottles made from stainless steel that have 2 layers of stainless steel with a gap in between that has had all the air removed creating a vacuum. It's this vacuum that helps to maintain the temperature of what's inside, regardless of whether it's hot or cold.

To get the best performance from insulated drink bottles with hot drinks, preheat your bottle with boiling water before adding your hot drink. For cool drinks, add ice cubes or add your drink already chilled. If you put an insulated drink bottle in the fridge with the lid on, the cold will not chill your drink because the vacuum insulation will protect what's inside from the fridge.

What's the best way to clean an insulated water bottle?

Best practice cleaning is to hand wash. It's very difficult for a dishwasher to really get inside and clean the bottle, and you'll never see inside well enough to know if it worked or not. Purchase a bottle brush cleaner if you don't already have one. All you need is the brush and some hot soapy water.

Insulated water bottles are durable, but you can pop the vacuum insulation if you're too rough with them. It's not common to see a silicone sleeve on insulated water bottles. If you do, it's for gripping the bottle, to provide some protection against bumps and accidental damage, and not to provide any extra insulation.