At present the formulae proposed by G Boensch and E Potulski in 1998 (Boensch and Potulski 1998 Metrologia 35 133–9) are mostly used to calculate the air refractive index. However, the humidity correction equation in the formulae is derived by using the light source of a Cd lamp whose light frequency stability is poor and at a narrow temperature range, around 20 °C. So it is no longer suitable in present optical precision measurements. To solve this problem, we propose a refractive index measurement system based on phase step interferometer with three frequency stabilized lasers (532 nm, 633 nm, 780 nm), corrected coefficients of the humidity are measured and a corresponding revised humidity correction equation is acquired. Meanwhile, the application temperature range is extended from 14.6 °C to 25.0 °C. The experiment comparison results at the temperature of 22.2–23.2 °C show the accuracy by the presented equation is better than that of Boensch and Potulski.