Best Multisurface Floor Cleaners, Lab-Tested and Reviewed

If you have different types of flooring in your home, you’ll want a multisurface floor cleaner that’s safe to use on a variety of flooring materials. Some floor cleaners are concentrated formulas that need to be diluted with water, while others can be applied directly to your floors straight from the bottle. The latter are designed to be rinse-free, meaning you don’t have to rinse the floors afterward.

From our tests, we found that not all multisurface floor cleaners are equally strong at removing dirt and grime. In our lab tests, we used popular cleaners on three common floor types—hardwood, laminate, and ceramic tile—and evaluated how effectively they removed scuff marks and messes, such as dried tomato soup and mustard.

The multisurface floor cleaners that perform best in our testing are those that clean well on all three floor types. We recommend two cleaners in particular for their strength and versatility, as we discuss below. For more detailed performance results on all the products we tested, you can consult our complete ratings of multisurface floor cleaners. And if you’re interested in floor cleaners that are the best at cleaning hardwood floors in particular, check out the three best hardwood floor cleaners we tried.

To get the best results from your cleaner, sweep or vacuum your floors before applying the product. And before you try any floor cleaner in your home, check the product label to make sure it’s appropriate for the surface you intend to use it on. You should also check the care guidelines from your flooring manufacturer. Also, as a rule, if you’re using a new cleaner, it’s safer to test it in a small, inconspicuous area of the floor first before applying it more broadly.