Vacuum cleaners are not only for carpet- a good vacuum cleaner is very useful for keeping hard floors dust and hair free. If your home has lots of hard floors, the good news is that you don’t need a particularly powerful model to achieve a thorough clean.
Or, like Kiril Natov, a blanket and padding cleaning technician with 18 years of experience in the industry, told me, “Any vacuum can soak up dust, hair and crumble your hardwood, tile or vinyl flooring, but some models do better than others.”
Read on for more tips from Kiril with experts from some of the biggest vacuum cleaner brands when choosing the perfect vacuum for hard floors. When you’re done, go to our guide to the best vacuums for wooden floors for Techradar’s top recommendations.
1. A dedicated soft floor head
The advice of almost all the experts I asked for was to look for a vacuum that has a soft floor head designed for this purpose. “For hardwood floors that are prone to scratch, a soft or natural brush head tip is a great opportunity to ensure optimal protection,” suggests Tom Akers from Miele GB.
Teya Field, from Henry, repeats her feelings: “For hard floors such as laminate, tiles and wood, vacuum, which comes with a specialized hard flooring tool works best to ensure gentle but effective pickup without scratching delicate surfaces.”
If you have delicate hardwood floors, it is worth looking for a vacuum that has a completely fluffy floor head. Many of today’s best dyson vacuum comes with a fluffy floor head designed specifically for hard floors along with a multipur bag for any floor type.
Dreames Mark Salmon Flags, DREAMES WIRELESS STICK -VAKUUM (including R20, sitting at the top of Techradar’s best wireless vacuum guide), also comes with a soft floor head for the same purpose.
The soft fibers come just close to the surface of the floor and agitate and clear the dirt there, all with gently buffer up the surface. The Dyson version has additional special features: “Dyson’s fluffy optical cleaning head has antistatic nylon brushes to remove electrostatic attractions between fine dust and hard floors for effective pickup,” says Dyson Engineer Amy Wright.
2.… or one that is gentle on the floor
If you have a mix of hard floor and blanket in your house and can’t bother to swap over cleaner heads, don’t fear – a number of large vacuum cleaner marks have floor heads designed to be suitable for any type of floor. These typically have a mixture of soft bristles to get just close to hard floor and firmer bristles for agitating carpet fibers. Ideally, the latter is cut a little shorter so that they do not quite reach the hard floor when the cleaner head is on the ground and therefore it will not scratch it up.
Other vacuum labels have alternative solutions. E.g. At certain Miele -Vacuum – including Miele Blizzard CX1 depicted below – you can adjust the height of the bristle hole depending on whether you clean hard floor or rug.
3rd rubber wheels
If your floors are delicate, you should also think about the vacuum wheels, the empty suggests. “For the vacuum itself, one with rubber wheels will also prevent riding as it is pulled along the floor.”
4. The ability to turn off the brush broll
Apart from scratches, another problem is scattered waste. Because all the dust just sits on top of the floor surface, going over it with a vacuum cleaner simply kicking it everywhere, out of the way of the suction style.
“To avoid the spread of dirt or possibly devastating delicate floors, look for a vacuum that either allows you to turn off the spinning brush or has a special cleaner head with soft bristle,” suggests Kiril from Premium Clean.
5. Light on the floor head
To help illuminate dust and dirt that might otherwise miss, look for a floor head with headlights. Dyson’s light green laser light is especially effective on the front and throws large shadows on even the smallest spots of dust and hair. They appear on the latest models including Gen5Detect and V15 detect.
6. A wet and dry vacuum
For a more thorough clean on tiles or Lino, Tom suggests choosing a wet -dry vacuum instead of a traditional VAC. Today’s best wet and dry vacuum cleaners will take care of vacuuming and moping at once, and some come with disinfection and/or self -cleaning features to help lower the amount of maintenance that is also required from you.
Avoid these if you have hardwood floors that are sensitive to water, however (here’s more about how to clean hardwood floors.)
7. … or a hybrid Robovac
Another great option for hard floors is to outsource the cleaning and choose one of the best robot wacuum. These tend to be less powerful than manual Vacs, but it’s not a problem with hard floors where all the dust just sits on the surface.
Go for a hybrid model and it will also take care of mopping for you as needed. If you are dealing with lots of lino or flat tiles, you might want a bot with a base station that can fill on board water tanks and/or clean the mop pads.
