12 best hard floor cleaners for keeping your flooring fresh and free from stains

Score: 97/100

Tefal's latest hard floor cleaner wowed our testers with its combination of excellent cleaning performance and smart design. In testing, it completely removed everything from fresh tomato soup to dried-on mud, tea and wine, leaving our floors streak-free and only lightly damp.

Its flexible 180° lay-flat design allows you to clean deep underneath low furniture. We also loved the self-propelled roller, which glides smoothly and makes the machine feel surprisingly lightweight. The LED display is clear and responsive, and it even has voice guidance to prompt you to fill or empty the tanks.

The excellent self-cleaning cycle flushes the roller with fresh water before drying it with hot air, which did a great job of cleaning it. Whereas many other self-cleaning docks only wash the brush, this extra drying step will help prevent odours and keep the brush in top condition.

It’s one of the more expensive hard floor cleaners we've tested, but this machine feels premium and certainly delivers on performance. If you have lots of hard flooring and want more run-time, less maintenance and brilliant under-furniture reach, it could be well worth the investment.

Score: 96/100

This was Shark’s first foray into the world of hard floor cleaners, and it easily rivals other more established brands. The cordless design offers maximum convenience if plug sockets are sparse. And our experts found it excelled at cleaning up spillages and stains, both shortly after they happen and once they’ve been left to set in.

Our floors were left smear-free and dry, and the cleaner didn’t cause any dullness or discolouration either. It’s also easy to reach under low furniture thanks to its flexible head, a feature our testers loved as it allows you to achieve a deeper clean. Its water tank is fairly small, but this is really our only niggle – especially as this makes it easier to handle.

Score: 95/100

Weighing just 2.5 kilos, this cordless hard floor cleaner is great if you want a light, easy mover. Testers found it had good reach under furniture, and you can adjust the height of the wand to suit too.

Putting the microfibre cloths in place is a little fiddly, but it comes with a good supply, and they clean well, lifting all the dirt we put in its path on test. Floors were polished, too. The round shape of the pads means reaching right into the corners doesn’t always come naturally. But you can use it with tap water or cleaning fluid and it’s gentle enough for wood flooring.

Score: 95/100

Designed for hard floors and rugs, the Bissell CrossWave is ideal if you’re in need of a multitasker. It vacuums, washes and dries as it goes, and it didn’t disappoint in our tests. We found it lifted everything from dried mud to wine stains effortlessly from hard floors (although it couldn’t fully eliminate the latter from carpets), leaving them sparkling and streak-free.

Clear and precise instructions make it a doddle to use, while it moved smoothly across all surfaces on test. One to invest in if you’ve used large rugs to bring a touch of cosiness to your hard flooring.

Score: 94/100

This versatile cleaner vacuums and mops, and has a turbo mode that’s suitable for cleaning area rugs. It performed particularly well as a standalone vacuum, lifting most of the dust our floor care experts laid out from laminate and between floorboards in one sweep.

It mopped up fresh stains impeccably too, with our tester’s only quibble being about the dampness left behind – which, in many ways, is to be expected. Set-in dirt took a few more passes of the cleaner to lift (we’re talking a maximum of three to four, depending on the stain).

As for user experience, all the controls were clear, as were the max fill lines on the water tank. Emptying the dirty tank was mess-free, and there’s even a handy cleaning mode. Popping it onto the charging station was a bit fiddly as you have to lift it in place, but otherwise, it’s thoughtfully designed and effective.

Score: 93/100

This Bissell model vacuums, mops, and dries flooring as you go (but not independently of each other), and has a steam mode to banish germs and give your flooring a deeper clean – a great feature for pet owners.

Our testers could barely fault its cleaning abilities, describing its performance as ‘incredible’ when tackling tea and mud. It lifted grease well too, and the steam mode banished red wine with ease. All while leaving the flooring behind it dry at every turn.

You have to plug this model in, but there’s on-board cord storage to keep things neat, and our experts said it moved smoothly on test. Using it was a straightforward, and it self-cleans, but while you can use this on area rugs, it’s not suitable for wax-polished surfaces and other upholstered items.

Score: 92/100

There’s a lot to like about this wet and dry vacuum cleaner. For starters, it self-propels, making it feel lightweight and easy to manoeuvre around your home. It also boasts smart tech, which detects the level of dirt you're tackling and adjusts settings accordingly. As a result, our testers found it completely banished any stains they laid (even if some, like dried tea, took several sweeps).

They also liked that it reached under furniture well, and found it easy to remove and replace the brush. Pouring in cleaning solution was fiddly, though, and while it promises a streak-free finish, testers noted that they only achieved this by drawing the vacuum back over the area just cleaned.

Handily, you can dry vacuum with this model too, and it did a relatively good job lifting most mess, but for a deep clean, we’d still advise using a traditional vacuum cleaner. By any standards, however, this would transform your mopping experience.

Score: 90/100

Roborock’s wet and dry vacuum cleaner stood out for its manoeuvrability in testing. A ball joint gives you a high level of control, while the lightweight build means it glides smoothly and is easy to carry up stairs. We also love how it can clean while laid almost completely flat (at just 12.5 cm high), which is a great feature for homes with lots of low furniture.

It was a strong performer across the board on stain removal – a day-old tea stain lifted in just one sweep – and our floors were left virtually streak-free and dried quickly. Testers noted that although the sides of the machine were good at cleaning tightly along wall edges, the front left a lot more residue, so it’s best to use it sideways when edge cleaning.

The self-cleaning dock is another big plus for keeping the machine hygienic long-term – just park it in the dock and your machine will be washed with hot water and dried with hot air. This is an excellent hard floor cleaner which feels well priced given the range of features.

Score: 89/100

With its LED display, voice alerts and self-cleaning charger dock, Vacmaster’s hard floor cleaner feels a lot more premium than the price may suggest. It’s incredibly straightforward to use and weighs less than four kilos, so it glides across floors and goes up stairs easily.

It performed well on our stain removal tests, cleaning up tomato soup in just one forward-and-back pass. Dried-on stains required a little more attention, but even tricky red wine stains were completely removed after a few passes. Its dust pick-up was strong on the vacuuming mode, too, making it great for everyday maintenance without washing floors every time.

It doesn’t come with extras like steam cleaning or heated self-cleaning, but for the price, this is a great value buy that goes beyond the basics.

Score: 89/100

This user-friendly wet and dry vacuum proved particularly effective at cleaning wet messes, removing tomato soup from ceramic flooring in one swift sweep. Even tough 24-hour stains lifted after some attention, with the ‘turbo mode’ removing remnants of tricky red wine.

On regular suction mode, an initial sweep pushed dust around rather than picking it up, but a few extra goes collected the majority. Our tester particularly liked the lie-flat design too, which allowed them to easily reach under furniture without losing suction.

It connects to an app where you can customise cleaning programmes, choosing between two wetness levels (daily and wet), and three different suction power levels (soft, standard and strong). Plus, you can initiate the self-cleaning process where the anti-tangle brush is immersed before it’s dried at high speed to quickly restore it before you tackle the next task.

Score: 89/100

This Bosch is more of a traditional vacuum, with mopping capabilities thanks to an additional head. Its vacuuming resulted in pristine flooring – it lifted over 95% of dust from all surfaces in several sweeps. It performed similarly with crumbs, was good with pet hair, and fared well in the car thanks to its crevice tool and upholstery brush.

Its mopping skills didn’t quite compare; while it lifted most tea stains on test, there were some streaks of mud left behind. But testers judge cleaners after just a couple of sweeps, so a few more passes should do the job.

And for day-to-day light floor washing, it’s certainly going to be a transformational buy given its ease of use. It’s light and easy to move, and it displays the battery life as you clean – which is good because, while it lasts up to 40 minutes, on turbo power you only get 10.