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The 4 Best Laundry Stain Removers, Tested and Reviewed

We tested eight products by Shout, OxiClean, The Laundress, a DIY vinegar-dish soap mixture, and more to see which removed stubborn, set-in stains

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Shout, OxiClean, OxiClean Max Force, and Miss Mouth's laundry stain removers on left, mustard stain on a white T-shirt on right.
Common stains like coffee, mustard, and grass can be tough to remove completely using laundry detergent alone.
Photos: Consumer Reports, Getty Images

The feeling of pulling a white T-shirt out of your closet, putting it on, looking in the mirror, and realizing the bit of coffee you spilled on it at last weekend’s brunch hasn’t completely washed out in the washer is a familiar one. Even the best laundry detergents can struggle to completely remove stubborn stains like coffee, blood, and grass. That’s where laundry stain removers come in. They’re formulated to penetrate set-in stains more deeply than laundry detergents and are a must-have in any home, especially for those with pets and children. 

In this article

To find out which stain removers deserve a place in your cleaning tool bag, we put eight store-bought and one DIY solution to the test. We stained white cotton fabric with some of the most common things you might spill on a white T-shirt. This included blood, coffee, mustard, concealer, and more.

Fabric sample with 11 food stains circled and identified as pen ink, lipstick, concealer, sweet potato baby food, grass, mustard, chocolate syrup, pig's blood, oil, chipotle sauce and coffee
We applied 11 stains to white fabric for our stain-remover tests.

Graphic: Consumer Reports Graphic: Consumer Reports

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We took before-and-after photos of all the stains and measured each stain’s color using a colorimeter in our lab. The colorimeter quantifies the color intensity of any surface you measure. From the measurements taken, we calculated how much of each stain each stain remover lifted. At the end of our testing, we collected 199 measurements. Using those measurements and photos, we found the best stain removers around.

We also considered the ingredients in each stain remover using data from CR partner SkinSafe. It provides product scores based on Mayo Clinic information on the most common allergy-inducing ingredients. The higher the SkinSafe score, the fewer potential allergens the product contains. The highest score possible is 100.

Sneak peek: Next time you spill coffee on a white shirt, skip the DIY solution. We found that a solution of white vinegar, Dawn dish soap, and water was not enough to remove this stain from white cotton fabrics.

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Consumer Reports Home & Trends Writer, Jodhaira Rodriguez.

Jodhaira Rodriguez

Jodhaira Rodriguez is a senior multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports. Before joining CR, she tested and wrote about cleaning and organizing products and major appliances like washing machines and dishwashers at Good Housekeeping. In her free time, you’ll find her reading, listening to true crime podcasts, or working on her latest hobby of the month.

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