.png&w=256&q=75){kind=small}
Should I Wear One or Two Hearing Aids?
Date Updated: July 28, 2025
Written by:
Rachel Lustbader is a writer and editor with a background in healthcare and technology. Her work has been published on websites including HealthCare.com, BiteSizeBio.com, BetterHelp.com, Caring.com, and PayingforSeniorCare.com. She studied health science and public health at Boston University.
Both of Rachel’s grandmothers had very positive experiences in senior living communities, and Rachel saw firsthand the impact that kind, committed caregivers and community managers can have on seniors’ and their family members’ lives. With her work at Caring, Rachel hopes to help other families find communities, caregivers, and at-home products that benefit elderly loved ones and make life less stressful for family caregivers
If you have hearing loss in both ears that requires correction by hearing aids, you should wear two hearing aids. However, even one hearing aid can improve your quality of life, and some forms of hearing loss may mean that you wouldn’t benefit from two hearing aids.
Hearing Loss Is Rarely Even
Similar to the way that one eye is often better than the other, one ear can also be better than the other. Sometimes, you may find that one ear would benefit from a hearing aid, but the other ear is perfectly fine, having no significant hearing loss.
Alternatively, it may go the other way. One ear may benefit from a hearing aid, but the other ear has such a profound loss of hearing that it wouldn’t benefit from a hearing aid. Again, you would wear one hearing aid in this instance. In any circumstance, the best hearing aid options are the ones that suit your specific requirements.
More Reasons You Might Wear One Hearing Aid
Hearing aids are devices, and like any other device, they can break or require some sort of maintenance. A hearing aid can also be misplaced, or it might be in an inconvenient location.
One of the more common reasons for taking out a hearing aid is simply because the ear itches — this is usually due to a buildup of wax combined with sweat irritating the ear. The hearing aid gets taken out, put somewhere convenient, and the other hearing aid is left in until bedtime. When you have two hearing aids in different places, you’ll naturally put one in first and then perhaps even temporarily forget where the other one is. If you’re in a rush, you might even leave the house without one of them in.
However, even one hearing aid can significantly improve your hearing, although it may affect your sense of where sound is coming from. This is because one ear is overcompensating for the other, so it sounds as though everything is coming from that side. This is usually a fairly minor inconvenience, and it doesn’t appear to affect balance significantly.