Best Vacuums for Hardwood Floors
Extend the life and beauty of your floors with one of these winners from CR's tests
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What’s the best way to care for hardwood floors? Vacuum manufacturers are answering that question by building models with features designed specifically for wood floors.
“If you need to clean only hardwood floors, you might be able to get away with just using a stick vacuum,” says Frank Rizzi, who conducts Consumer Reports’ vacuum tests. “Otherwise, opt for a more powerful vacuum, such as an upright or a canister.”
Whichever type of vacuum you choose, follow these tips to keep your wood floors looking their best. And if your current vacuum isn’t cutting it, see below for the vacuums that knock it out of the park in our bare-floor test.
Place a doormat outside entrances to keep people from tracking dirt and grit indoors. Establishing a no-shoes policy indoors will go even further toward preserving floors.
Use plastic or felt protectors under furniture legs to prevent scratches. When rearranging furniture, always lift pieces rather than sliding them.
In the kitchen, place a mat in front of the sink and range to avoid wearing out sections of the flooring.
Don’t use a steam mop on hardwood floors. “Vapor can get pushed into cracks and crevices, causing cupping and a hazing of the finish,” says Brett Miller, vice president of education and certification at the National Wood Flooring Association.
Members can keep reading for our top vacuum model for each vacuum type. Each one is highly rated to clean hardwood flooring, but many are powerful enough to handle carpets, too. For more information, see our vacuum buying guide and flooring ratings and buying guide.
Best Vacuums for Hardwood Floors
There are more than 250 vacuums in our ratings, ranging from canister and stick models to robot vacuums and handheld cleaners. Below, we highlight top models from each category that work well on hardwood flooring.
In general, canister vacuums do a better job on bare floors than upright or stick vacuums because they’re less likely to disperse dust and debris while vacuuming it up. The bagged Miele Complete C3 Marin is the best of the best, sucking up sand in our tests like a champ. And it features a brush on/off switch, which minimizes the dispersal of dirt and protects the finish on hardwood floors. It also earns a top-notch rating in removing pet hair from carpeting.
Canister vacuums also come in bagless versions, which save you the hassle and expense of changing bags, though they often require additional filters that need to be replaced. If you don’t mind that trade-off, the bagless Miele Blizzard CX1 Cat & Dog earns top scores for bare floors and an excellent rating in our pet-hair test. The hose suction is pretty good too, which means you can use this vacuum on curtains or upholstery without harming the fabric.
Though canister vacuums have the edge overall in our bare-floor tests, there are some darned good uprights to choose from, including the top-rated Kenmore Elite Pet Friendly 31150. In addition to earning an excellent rating for pickup on bare floors, the vacuum also has exceptionally strong airflow through the hose, and it’s terrific at containing the dirt and debris it collects rather than allowing particles to escape back into the room.
The Shark PowerDetect AZ4002 offers both strong cleaning performance and convenient features. It’s stellar at cleaning bare floors, making it the ideal vacuum for kitchens, bathrooms, and hardwood floors. It also earned near-top-level scores in our carpet cleaning tests and automatically adjusts the speed of the brush rolls depending on the floor type. This vacuum is able to sense dirt and boost its power to pull up more debris. And unlike some vacuums that can only clean when you move it forward, this one picks up debris moving both forward and backward.
The corded Shark PowerDetect HZ4002 offers top-notch cleaning for bare floors and pet hair and performs above par on carpets. It features an auto-detect mode that adjusts the brush roll speed to the surface, transitioning efficiently between carpets and hard floors. It also has two brush rolls: one with rubber fins for optimal contact with surfaces and a soft roller to capture small particles. It can be converted into a hand vac, which makes it easier to clean stairs and reach higher areas in your home. It also pulls apart for compact storage, allowing it to stand on its own and take up minimal space. In our member surveys, Shark corded vacuums earn a top-level mark for predicted reliability and a passable mark for owner satisfaction.
This premium Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra VS90F40DMK/AA stick vacuum delivers high performance and is packed with advanced tech features—reflected in its higher price. It includes a digital display that shows real-time battery run time while in use and battery percentage while charging. The removable battery adds flexibility, and the vacuum can be connected through an app (optional) to unlock AI-powered functionality such as detection capabilities and suction and run time optimization. It also comes with a cleaning station that serves as a charger and automatically empties the contents of the vacuum into a station bin.
The iRobot Roomba Max 705 delivers great performance across the board. The vacuum earns top scores in most of our cleaning tests, only coming up just shy of excellence when it comes to carpet and edge cleaning. While it earns just a middling score for data privacy, no other robot vacuum scores higher in that test. This robovac features the brand’s reliable navigation smarts and uses lidar to work around your house without many bumps and snags. This self-emptying model discharges its dustbin at its charging base, and you can command it using your voice with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple’s Siri, no hands required.
Not all handheld vacuums tackle pet hair effectively, but the Shark Ion W1 WV201 aces that task. It’s also a champ at cleaning bare floors, earning a top-notch rating for that and for getting into hard-to-reach places. And it’s not too shabby at cleaning carpet, either. The vacuum and all its attachments can be stored on the charging base, making it a real space saver. And at just 1.4 pounds, it’s one of the lightest handheld vacuums in our tests. The only downside to its small size is the small dustbin, which may have to be emptied more than once if you have a sizable spill.
How CR Tests Vacuums
In our lab, CR’s engineers put vacuum cleaners through a set of tough tests to evaluate how well a model picks up dirt, how much debris it retains, how easy it is to maneuver, and how noisy it is. We embed sand and pet hair into carpets to see how effective the appliance is at picking them up. We use the same type of litter on bare floors to observe whether the vacuum picks it up or scatters it about. And we maneuver the vacuum around the floor, just like you would, to judge how easy it is to operate. For battery-powered vacuums, such as cordless stick vacs, handheld vacs, and robotic vacs, we test the run time of each model.
For more details on how we test, take a sneak peek into our vacuum labs.
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