Best carpet cleaners – tried and tested models to refresh your carpet

The best carpet cleaner can be a gamechanger for your home, breathing life back into even the grubbiest of floors. Even if your carpet has admittedly seen better days, a once over with a high-quality carpet cleaner can make a huge difference, reviving its look and feel.

While owning one of the best vacuums is a must for keeping your floors in tip-top shape, it's no match for the deeper, embedded grime that only a wet clean with one of the best carpet cleaners can shift.

Not everyone needs to invest in a carpet cleaner, but if you've got children or pets, oftentimes accidents are bound to happen and will need immediate attention. Therefore, while renting a carpet cleaner is an option for occasional use, if muddy paw prints and spillages are a regular occurrence in your home, owning one is the more practical option for a frequent deep clean.

I’ve had hands-on experience with every carpet cleaner on this list, using them on carpets, upholstery, and stairs, exploring how easy they are to use, how quickly the surfaces dry after use, effectiveness of mopping up spillages, water capacity, the noise levels and what accessories they come with. One model that stood out from the rest was the VAX Platinum SmartWash Pet-Design Carpet Washer, and here's how it compares to everything else I've tested.

The quick list

Best carpet cleaner

Best carpet cleaner overall

VAX appliances are reliably good and the VAX Platinum SmartWash Pet-Design ticks a lot of boxes, making it worthy of the top spot. It’s a powerful carpet cleaner that includes a hot air dry-only setting to remove as much moisture as possible from carpets.

Capable of removing deep dirt, it automatically mixes in the cleaning solution. What’s more, there’s no trigger to dispense water onto the carpet, it automatically wets the carpet on the forward push and sucks up the dirty water as you pull it back.

The downside is that it’s bulky so it takes up a fair chunk of storage space. It also felt heavy to me to push around, but it wasn't too much of an issue if just focused on one room at a time. I also would've preferred an easy way of knowing when the dirty water tank needs emptying, or fresh water needed adding so I didn't have to stop and start as much. Not to mention, it has a slightly higher price tag. Therefore, if you can't quite stretch to this, the VAX Rapid Power is a more affordable alternative.

During testing, I found that the useful hand tools work well on stairs and upholstery and the spin scrub tool is a great option for pet beds. Granted, this is an investment-level carpet cleaner, but it’s a reliable and easy-to-use all-rounder so you’ll get your money’s worth.

Read our VAX Platinum SmartWash carpet washer review for more details.

The best carpet cleaner and steamer in one

As the only carpet cleaner to incorporate steam cleaning, the BISSELL Revolution Hydrosteam is quite unique. The steam-only mode is designed for use as a stain pre-treatment, rather than a full clean. But steam is also dispensed as part of the main SteamWash Max Clean mode.

Water is released manually via a trigger but suction is always on, so it’s continually pulling liquid back out of the carpet. For lighter cleans the Quick Dry mode uses less water and my carpets were dry within 3-4 hours using this mode.

The 3 in 1 stair cleaning tool rotates to give three different size brushes, including the main flat brush as well as a curved part to help with cleaning the carpet where it rolls over the step. And there’s a small angle so you can get right into the corners. In my opinion, it’s the most thorough stair-cleaning tool of all the models on this list.

One of my main gripes with it is that the floorhead brushes continue to rotate when using the hand tool. This was a pain when sitting on hard floors while cleaning upholstered chairs. Nevertheless, the hand tool did a good job of cleaning a grubby dining chair, though, like most others, upholstery is left more saturated than carpet. The other downside was that I did find this quite heavy to manoeuvre.

Best carpet cleaner for spot cleans

The best feature of the Shark CarpetXpert is that unlike many of the others on this list, the hose for handheld cleaning is always attached and ready to go. Simply flipping a lever at the base, stops the roller brush and engages the handheld tools. Making this a great choice to have at hand if you regularly need to do spot cleans in addition to full carpet cleans. I actually preferred it for these as the dirty water tank was quite small compared to the others, so needed emptying fairly often when cleaning a larger room.

Like the VAX Platinum, it releases water on the forward push and sucks it up as you pull it back, so there’s no trigger on the handle. Plus there’s a dry-only mode, where it’ll only suck up water from the carpet, allowing you to go over the whole carpet to remove as much water as possible. Although it still left my carpets a little damper than some of the other, higher-scoring cleaners on this list. That said, they were far from saturated and still dried by the next day.

The wide hand tool makes short work of stairs and the smaller one made for a great size for my upholstered armchair. To get into nooks and crannies it can be used with no tool attached. And if you have an accident-prone pet, the game-changing Pet Stain Trapping tool allows you to suck up the liquid. The clever part is that it stays contained in a small tank in the tool, so I didn't have to clean smelly residues out of the whole carpet cleaner afterwards.

The best budget carpet cleaner

The VAX Rapid Power Revive is a good carpet and upholstery cleaner at a great price. It washes carpets thoroughly, although it doesn’t leave them as dry as the VAX Platinum SmartWash above. But, if you want carpets to dry fast, the quick clean mode gives a lighter clean and leaves much less water in the carpets so they dry faster - perfect for a speedy spruce up.

It was heavy to push around and the position of the water tank blocked my view of the front of the floorhead. So not only can it be hard to navigate in tight spaces, but I couldn't see how much water is being sucked up through the nozzle while using it. It also can’t reach under furniture, so I had to clear the room for the best clean.

The hand tool is a great size for tackling carpets on stairs. It left my dining chair quite saturated even after going over several times to suck out all the water. That said, once dry, the cream upholstery was much cleaner and vastly improved. The small crevice tool is useful for getting into awkward areas that the hand tool is too big for.

To dispense water you have to keep the trigger pressed, then when you let go, it sucks up and dries the carpet. The handy rinse-only mode means even if the cleaning solution tank is still full, it’ll just use plain water.

The best multi-purpose carpet cleaner

If you want a carpet cleaner that can also see you through plumbing leaks and water spillages, as well as freshening carpets and upholstery, good old Henry is the one for you. Plus, it’s the second most affordable carpet cleaner on this list.

Henry Wash is a no-nonsense industrial-style carpet cleaner, what’s more, it’s the only model on this list that can also be used to wash hard floors. And it’ll be invaluable if you ever have a big spill or leak, you can simply use the hose to suck up all the liquid - I actually experienced the joys of this when a radiator in my home started leaking.

It’s great for giving carpets a quick refresh. But because it spays the water on and sucks it away again without agitating or brushing the carpet, it won’t deliver a deep clean. Likewise for upholstery, the handheld tool doesn’t have a brush built in, so it works best for a light spruce-up.

For hard floor cleaning it sprays out water, you can then scrub the floor with one side of the tool, before flipping it over and using the squeegee part to collect the water. It’s a bit more industrial than an electric mop and I found that floors can become quite wet if you’re not careful, but it certainly removed a lot of dirt from my slate kitchen floor.

One downside is that the dirty water tank is the whole body of Henry, so it was a little awkward and cumbersome to empty out the dirty water and clean it afterwards. The plus side is that this means it has a large capacity and didn't need emptying too often.

How we test carpet cleaners

In accordance with how we test products that we recommend at Ideal Home, I tried all five carpet cleaners in my own home. I tested them on carpets, carpeted stairs, and upholstery. I assessed how easy each model was to put together, as well as noting any issues with disassembling and cleaning after use.

Generally, carpet cleaners will perform differently on different types and ages of carpet, as well as different types and ages of stains. However I was able to compare overall ease of use as well as how wet the carpet was after cleaning. I also took into account the price, water capacity, and usefulness of the various tools and cleaning modes.

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FAQs

How can I choose the best carpet cleaner?

There are a few important things to consider when choosing the best carpet cleaner for you – especially if you're looking to compare a carpet cleaner and vacuum cleaner to then choose the most suitable option.

• What you want to use it for: if you only want to wash flat carpets, you won’t need one that comes with a range of hand tools. But, if you’d like the option to clean things like upholstery, and pet beds, or if you have carpeted stairs, you'll find a selection of hand tools essential.
• The capacity: you don’t have a huge amount of carpet, you probably won’t mind if the carpet cleaner doesn’t have big tanks for clean and dirty water. But the larger the tank, the longer you can clean uninterrupted, so for bigger houses with lots of carpet, you’ll need good-sized clean and dirty water tanks.
• Cleaning solution: think about are whether you want the cleaner to mix in the cleaning solution for you, or if you’d prefer to measure it out yourself.
• Speed of drying: if it’s important that your carpets dry fast, look out for a model with a warm air drying mode or alternatively, a quick dry cleaning mode that uses less water for faster drying.

How can I most effectively use my carpet cleaner?

Carpet cleaning can feel like a monumental job, especially if you're renovating a property that has seen better days. So how can you make sure you get the most from your new carpet cleaning investment?

Sarah Dempsey, a cleaning expert from MyJobQuote.co.uk, has essential tips to get the most out of your cleaner, with the first being to 'clean out as many pieces of furniture as you can from the room, giving you access to as much carpet as possible'.

Then, Sarah advises 'vacuuming the carpet thoroughly, ensuring you get right up to the skirting board', and notes that it's important when you're done that you make sure your carpet has dried properly before you move any furniture back in.

For reviving the most-trodden surfaces in your home, a carpet cleaner might just be the miracle product you're looking for. I'm confident that they're just the thing to turn your carpets around.