Homes tend to have a variety of surfaces; rare are homes with just one type of flooring. Carpeted bedrooms are popular but hard-wearing, easy to clean options are preferred by many for areas such as kitchens, bathrooms, and dining areas that tend to get messy more frequently than say a bedroom.
Bare floor areas in homes may be tiles, Lino, real wood, laminate, or concrete. The main issue to worry about when selecting the best bare floor vacuum is not carpet but the risk of damage to the floor. Key features to look for then would be super soft bristles, the ability to turn off any rollers, and perhaps rubber feet rather than plastic to minimize the risk of scratches.
So in this article, we will let you know the great tips to choose an excellent bare floor vacuum for your cleaning needs.
Important Factors to Consider
The following are some of the critical factors to consider when choosing a reliable bare floor vacuum.
Suction & Filtration
You need to look for a powerful suction cleaner. Cyclonic systems tend to have the most reliable and consistent suction even if the filter may become blocked. If you choose a vacuum with powerful suction your cleaning jobs can be done much faster!
A HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filter is essential if you wish to reduce exposure to allergens in your home. A HEPA filter vacuum will remove dust, dander, pollen, and other allergens down to 0.3 microns.
Bags or no bags? Cord or no cord?
Bagged or bagless, cord or no cord, lightweight/heavy duty the options are endless. When you need to find the best bare floor vacuum for your home, you need to think about what you have to vacuum and how frequently. Think about your flooring; deep pile carpet or bare floors with area rugs?
A good vacuum needs to be easy to empty. Bags in a bagged vacuum are an ongoing cost for both your pocket and the environment. A bagless canister can easily be opened straight into the trash.
Some cordless vacuums take 10+ hours to fully charge and then only last for 20 minutes. Question is, can you get around your apartment on 20 minutes of battery life, or is a cordless only suitable for occasional spot cleaning jobs?
Efficiency and Effectiveness
A major concern for consumers with hardwood floors is the ability of the vacuum to pick up larger debris e.g. pet food biscuits. The worst vacuums are those that can crush and spray debris out the back rather than up the nozzle. A guard along the back of the head can be useful but an adjustable height or retractable brushes may be more desirable.
Generally, vacuum heads have rotating brushes to pick up dirt and hair. As long as these brushes are kept tangle-free from extra-long hair then they should not stall and cause issues for vacuuming hard floors and scratching.
Research and Reviews
Many vacuums on the market will claim to be the best suction, the best for pet hair, or the best for carpet, the best bare floor vacuum, etc. Read all the reviews you can, especially the negatives to see if there are any obvious problems with a design.
If a vacuum manufacturer claims that the rubber feet don’t scratch hardwood floors, look for that in reviews as a complaint. There are multi-function bare floor vacuums on the market. You may need to clean hard floors, carpets, rugs, and stairs but do you need a multi-function vacuum to do it.
Many vacuums have adjustable heights to cope with different carpet heights. The delay comes when you have to tell the head to switch from hard floor to carpet, older and cheaper models will tend to be less disruptive but may not even adjust height! Switching the vacuum to a bare floor surface may be as easy as flicking a switch or pressing a button or you may have to switch heads completely.
Recommendations
For bare and hard floors recommendation is for a lightweight model that doesn’t scratch the floors. Tools are useful but not essential for cleaning most places. However, some hard floor vacuums are marketed with a microfibre cleaning head (essentially a washable, microfibre cloth that fits over the vacuum head to assist with floor cleaning.
The main aspect to consider is the transition of the vacuum head across multiple surfaces quickly and easily. Just a flick of a switch is usually all that is needed to switch from carpet to harder floors in a good vacuum model.
There are lots of vacuums and manufacturers to choose from. Concentrate on a few key features such as soft bristles, rollers that turn off, and rubber wheels to get the best bare floor vacuum for your home.
Here are our recommendations:
Conclusion
Well, choosing a reliable bare floors vacuum is not difficult if you do a little research. However, this can be a challenging task if you are new and inexperienced.
But don’t worry; you can use our guidelines in this article to help you choose a reliable cleaner. If you are still undecided, you can choose any one of the models recommended above for your floor cleaning needs.