Do Laundry Detergent Sheets Work as Well as Liquid?

How do laundry liquids, packs, and sheets stack up? Below is a cleaning comparison of three top-scoring detergents by category from our tests: sheets, liquid, and pods.

For a rundown of more options we recommend—as well as some that bomb in our laundry lab—see the best and worst laundry detergents from CR’s tests and our full laundry detergent ratings.

You may know them by different names—laundry sheets, detergent strips, or detergent squares, among other monikers. They’re essentially the same thing—plastic-free sheets of concentrated laundry detergent whose ingredients are held together by a resin and dissolvable paper. They’re low-sudsing and dissolve in cold or hot water. And they’ll save space in your laundry room cabinet.

Detergent strips have earth-friendly names and usually come in compostable packaging. Most are claimed to be hypoallergenic—free of parabens, phosphates, bleaches, and dyes. You may not see them among those brightly colored bottles in your laundry aisle, but they are widely available online, some by subscription.

“Laundry sheets are still a relatively new category, but interest in sustainability, environment, and biodegradable products is on the rise,” says César Carroll, a CR market analyst. “Consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, are seeking alternatives that are more natural, produce less waste, and are more convenient. Therefore brands are looking to fill this void.”

Laundry sheets work with all types of washers, including high-efficiency machines. For a midsized load, their cost is in line with liquid detergents, pods, and packs. You can find these strips in boxes costing $5 to $30 that will launder 30 to 60 loads.

Making the switch from liquids to strips will cut down on detergent overdosing—a common consumer mistake. (Our detergent tests consistently find you need only about 1.5 ounces of liquid detergent per average load.)

CR has long tested and rated liquid detergents, pods, and packs. So our test engineers recently put laundry sheets from six brands—Earth Breeze, Ecos, Ecowise, Kind, Sheets Laundry Club, and Tru Earth—to the test.

To test detergents, our engineers launder fabric swatches that are saturated with blood, body oil, chocolate, coffee, dirt, grass, and salad dressing. We use stains that are exceedingly hard to remove so that we can detect real differences among products. We wash using the normal cycle, cold water, high spin, and heavy soil setting.

Even the best detergents can’t remove every stain completely. But laundry sheets as a group didn’t perform well—netting scores that range from mediocre to lousy.

“In fact, they had lower performance as a group than our lowest-performing liquid or pod/packs detergents,” Handel says. And only one brand of laundry sheet performs better than mediocre while cleaning any stain (Earth Breeze Liquidless Eco Sheets performs moderately when it comes to cleaning dirt).

By comparison, the top-scoring liquid detergent in our ratings—Tide Plus Ultra Stain Release—earns an Overall Score of 84, with impressive marks for cleaning a variety of stains, including body oil, dirt, and salad dressing. The top pod/pack in our tests, Tide Plus Hygienic Clean Heavy Duty 10X Power, receives a 78. By contrast, Earth Breeze, the top-rated laundry strip brand, earned a 29. Tru Earth Eco Strips, the lowest-rated laundry sheets, received an abysmal Overall Score of 11.

We also found that the laundry sheets we tested are especially ineffective at cleaning coffee stains. If you start your day with a cup of joe, you may want to skip these strips in favor of a liquid such as Tide Eco-Box Original, the highest-rated detergent for these tough stains.

If you’re organizing your home around a sustainable lifestyle—and your laundry isn’t heavily soiled—laundry sheets may be a viable option. For instance, you could use the strips for routine loads and save the traditional liquid or pod detergent for deeper cleaning—using a minimal amount per load and increasing the dose only for dirtier items.

“That’s sufficient in most cases to clean laundry,” Handel says. “Eco-conscious consumers may also choose Tide Eco-Box Original. It comes in a box with a plastic bladder, and Tide claims it uses 60 percent less plastic.” Handel also says he notices a slight eco-friendly shift in pod/pack detergent packaging.

If your concern is harsh chemicals, an option is Sensitive Home’s laundry detergent for sensitive skin, which gets the EPA’s Safer Choice distinction. It’s claimed to be 96 percent plant-based, hypoallergenic, and free of dyes, fragrances, parabens, and other scary-sounding chemicals. CR hasn’t tested this product.

“It’s usually recommended for anyone with sensitive skin to avoid cleaning products containing SLS [sulfates],” says Tunde Akinleye, a CR chemist. “Alternatives include cleaning products that are sulfate-free or use non-ionic surfactants like alkyl ethoxylate or fatty acid ethoxylate.”

Sulfates are anionic surfactants used in cleaning products to effectively break up stains. Deemed safe for household products, they’re a known irritant that can cause itching or rashes in people with sensitive skin.

Until laundry sheets up their game, eco-conscious consumers will have to continue to nudge the laundry industry to address environmental concerns with better packaging and more effective eco-friendly detergent formulas. Until then, it’ll require some patience and ingenuity because, for now, laundry sheets are a bit of a washout.