5 Things to Know Before Buying a Carpet Cleaner

The full-sized carpet cleaners currently in our ratings cost from $120 to $700. Remember that while more expensive deep cleaners might be twice as big, they don’t necessarily clean twice as well. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you shop:

Carpet cleaners are heavy when empty and even heavier when filled with cleaning solution. A full tank adds 6 to 15 pounds to the full-sized models in our ratings.

On each model page, we list the carpet cleaner’s weight when empty and when full. Of course, a handle makes it easier to carry your machine around, so look for a model that has one if heft is a concern.

You should check the tank setup, settings, accessories, and the lengths of the cord and hose. Most carpet cleaners are dual-tank models with one tank for water and cleaning solution, and another for the dirty water the carpet cleaner collects during cleaning. Some models, however, have three tanks: one for water, one for the cleaning solution, and one for the dirty water. These machines automatically mix the correct ratio of water to cleaning solution, saving you the hassle of measuring the right balance yourself.

Some manufacturers claim that their models clean hardwood or tiled floors as well as carpets, but consult your flooring manufacturer before exposing your floor, especially a wood floor, to water. There are also carpet cleaners with dry-only settings that let you suck up more water after your initial cleaning, which may speed up drying time.

When it comes to accessories, an independently rotating brush tends to scrub more aggressively than a fixed brush (or no brush at all). Some models offer a variety of tools for special applications, including upholstery, small stains, pet stains, stairs, and corners and crevices.

A longer cord and a hose can save you some repositioning effort. The models currently in our ratings typically have cords that are 20 to 22 feet, but some run as long as 29 feet. A hose is especially useful for cleaning stairs, upholstery, and other tough-to-reach areas. “If your stairs have carpeting, you’ll want a longer hose to reach up the steps,” Kahl says. “And remember, these machines are heavy. You don’t want your machine falling down the stairs after you tug the hose too far.” The hoses on the cleaners we tested range from 7 to 9 feet long.

The standard solution is fine for most cleaning. Manufacturers recommend using their proprietary cleaning solution with their machines—some even require it, at the risk of voiding the warranty. And they might sell a bewildering array of specialized solutions. Hoover, for one, offers multiple formulas for carpets and floors.

But for routine carpet cleaning, specialty formulas and spot-stain removers aren’t necessary. Save specialized solutions for stubborn stains, like pet messes.

Carpet cleaners are loud. An average vacuum cleaner can produce up to 70 decibels of noise. A carpet cleaner is much, much louder. In our tests, the average noise level was 80 dBA. (In decibels, a reading of 80 is twice as loud as 70.) At this decibel level, we recommend wearing hearing protection, especially if you’re using the machine for a prolonged period. So grab noise-canceling headphones or earplugs that guarantee protection for up to 85 dBA. (Check out these tips for preventing hearing loss.)

Cleaning with a carpet cleaner takes time. A vacuum can come out of the closet ready to go. But a carpet cleaner? Not so much. First, you have to move furniture out of the area you plan to clean. Then vacuum the carpet. Next, fill the machine with cleaning solution and water.

When using a carpet cleaner, you push and pull it just like a vacuum. Push the carpet cleaner out to arm’s length, then pull it back while continuing to squeeze the trigger. For a dry cycle, release the trigger and complete the same steps.

To suction the cleaning solution from the rug, make dry passes with the carpet cleaner. If the carpet is still dirty, repeat wet and dry passes until the cleaning solution you removed from the carpet runs clear. Once you’re satisfied, you’ll need to let the carpet dry completely before you (or your pets) walk on it, or you put the furniture back.

To keep your carpet cleaner in peak condition, don’t skip the following maintenance steps: After a cleaning session, make sure you clean out the tank, remove any debris from the brushes, rinse the different parts of the carpet cleaner with warm water, and reassemble only when they’re completely dry. Small steps like these will help prevent any odors from developing and extend the machine’s lifespan, says Meghan Johnston, a senior brand manager at Bissell.

Here are the best carpet cleaners based on our latest tests.

We put each carpet cleaner through a battery of cleaning performance tests. To assess both full-sized and portable carpet cleaners, our engineers soil large swatches of off-white nylon carpet with red Georgia clay, and then run a cleaner over the carpet for four wet and four dry cycles, simulating how you’d clean a particularly dirty spot on a well-trafficked carpet. Then they repeat the test on two more swatches.

During the test, our experts use a colorimeter, a device that measures light absorption, to take 60 readings of each carpet: 20 in its clean state, 20 after it’s been soiled, and 20 after it’s been cleaned. Sixty readings each on three swatches make a total of 180 readings per model. Our cleaning score is based on how much color (i.e., soil) remains.

We conduct a similar test to assess drying performance. We apply a set amount of water to carpet swatches and run a dry pass with each carpet cleaner. Our testers measure the carpet’s weight before and after it’s been “dried” with the cleaner (the cleaners don’t fully dry the carpet, but the good ones can pick up a decent amount of water). We assign drying scores based on how much water the cleaner removes.

We also evaluate how loud each carpet cleaner is by taking decibel and sone readings. The scores for convenience are based on factors such as the cleaner’s weight, the capacity of its water tanks, and the number of additional attachments that come with it.

In our carpet cleaner ratings, you’ll notice that the scores for portable carpet cleaners are lower than almost all of the scores for full-sized models. That’s because we put the portables through the same rigorous tests as the full-sized cleaners, tests designed to evaluate how well a carpet cleaner can extract deeply embedded soil from a carpet. But portable carpet cleaners are really designed for a different job: spot-cleaning smaller stains. So while their scores are low compared with full-sized models, they’ll perform much better on the kinds of messes they’re designed for.