Floor Cleaners

Pine O Cleen wipes the floor with the competition

If there’s an area of your home that usually gets overlooked when it comes to regular cleaning, there’s a good chance it’s the floor. It may be directly under your feet, but how often do you really think about it? We’re all so concerned about benchtops, sinks and kitchen appliances that we often forget about one of the greatest harbourers of dirt and bacteria – the floor! Where do you think that dropped food and mud from shoes ends up? Clean floors are essential to a healthy home, especially if you have young kids that crawl around. So, which floor cleaners will be the best bet for maintaining a clean and healthy floor? Our customer satisfaction ratings can offer a helpful guide.

Once again we’ve surveyed more than 1,500 consumers across Australia and asked them about the floor cleaner they most recently bought and used when it comes to factors like effectiveness, product design, ease of use, smell and value for money. Eight big name brands have featured in the final results, but this time only one was deemed worthy of top spot in our ratings table – Pine O Cleen.

• Last year Pine O Cleen was joined on five stars for overall customer satisfaction by Earth Choice, but this time it goes it alone. In addition to its overall rating, Pine O Cleen also received five-star reviews for effectiveness, product design, ease of use and smell.
• Earth Choice has to settle for four stars overall this year, but still recorded top marks for product design, ease of use and environmental friendliness. ALDI Powerforce and Dettol also scored four stars overall.
• Ajax, Mr Muscle, Handy Andy and Coles all scored three stars for overall customer satisfaction.

Pine O Cleen is a consistently strong-performer in our annual reviews of various cleaning products, with customers seemingly won over by the balance it strikes between quality and price. Its spray cleaners and handy disposable wipes also come in a healthy choice of fragrances at a reasonable price compared with other big names brands on supermarket shelves.

You may also be interested in:

• Toilet Cleaners
• Bathroom Cleaners
• Multipurpose Cleaners

How to find a good floor cleaner

Whether you get on your hands and knees and scrub, or lean on your trusty old mop or steam mop, you will undoubtedly need a floor cleaner that lives up to its dirt-busting promises. This means removing any stubborn stains you can see on the floor – and handling those tiny bacteria particles you can’t see. You’ll also want a floor cleaner that’s easy to use and represents good value for money. Our research this year identified the following drivers of customer satisfaction when it comes to buying floor cleaner:

Top Floor Cleaners

Here is an overview of the eight brands in this year’s floor cleaner review, in order of their ranking.

Pine O Cleen

Pine O Cleen is a specialist in all things benchtop, floor and even surfaces, with a wide range of cleaners that typically fall into the ‘multipurpose’ category. If you want a trigger spray cleaner or wipes to quickly wash down the kitchen or bathroom, Pine O Cleen has you well covered. Popular scents include lemon & lime, apple and eucalyptus, while its specific floor cleaners are ‘Crisp Apple’ and ‘Pomegranate Blossom’, claiming to cut through tough dirt and grime on floors and tiles, while killing 99.9% of germs and leaving a brilliant shine. Aussie consumers are certainly won over this year, rating Pine O Cleen five stars overall and the only brand worthy of top marks for effective cleaning.

ALDI Powerforce

Discount supermarket chain ALDI comes to the cleaning game with its Powerforce range. It was the only brand to record five stars on value for money this year, while also achieving top marks when it comes to ease of use and product design. Powerforce also picked up a creditable four stars on effectiveness. ALDI Powerforce liquid floor cleaner is available in three scents – Original, Citrus and Wooden. ALDI won our award for floor cleaners in 2016 and is generally a strong contender across most cleaning categories. It is currently top of the table for toilet cleaners and has enjoyed unrivalled success in our highly competitive reviews of laundry powders and laundry liquids over the years.

Dettol

Dettol is a master of all things antibacterial, boasting a comprehensive range of trigger sprays and wipes to help keep areas of your home looking and feeling all clean and healthy. Dettol is arguably best-known for its Glen 20 sprays and antibacterial gels, with numerous products that can generally be placed under the ‘multipurpose’ umbrella, including its Antibacterial Surface Cleanser and Healthy Clean Kitchen spray for all kinds of surfaces. When it comes to specific floor-cleaning products, Dettol has its ‘Floor Cleaning System’ – basically large wipes that are claimed to see off 99.9% of the germs you’re likely to find on the floor. Dettol proved a strong contender again this year, earning four stars for effectiveness and overall customer satisfaction.

Earth Choice

Keeping your home nice and clean doesn’t have to come at a cost to the environment and Earth Choice is certainly the brand of choice for many Aussie consumers. Amongst its armoury of cleaning products is its Floor & Surface cleaner in an attractive bottle made of recycled plastic. It’s claimed to see off dirt and grime and leave surfaces streak-free, while also limiting waterway pollution. It can be used undiluted on surfaces or diluted in a bucket for floor-cleaning. Earth Choice has an army of loyal customers across the country and when it comes to floor cleaner they have deemed the brand worthy of four stars for overall satisfaction, but five stars in the areas of product design, ease of use and environmental friendliness.

Ajax

Walk into a supermarket almost anywhere in the world and you’ll probably find a few bottles of Ajax. It’s a global brand with an extensive range of cleaning products, from bathrooms to kitchens and everything in between. Ajax floor cleaner is available with a lemon or lime scent and is infused with baking soda – a natural ingredient known for being able to clean stone surfaces safely. Beyond that, Ajax boasts a range of powder cleansers and cream cleansers for a variety of flooring types. Despite the comprehensive line up of products, it was only three stars overall for Ajax this year, with a mixture of three and four stars in other categories.

Coles

Coles has a range of budget-oriented floor cleaners, including its no-frills liquid cleaner, as well as some floor wipes made for easy spill clean-ups. When it comes to supermarket private label cleaning products, it seems to be a case of ‘you get what you pay for’. Coles’ floor cleaner will be the cheapest floor cleaner on the shelves in Coles, but is it worth spending a little extra? Aussie consumers seem to think so, rating the brand just three stars for overall satisfaction, with the same result in every other research category.

Handy Andy

You can still use this product if your name is Steve and you’re pretty useless around the house. A Clorox brand, ‘Handy Andy’ is a no-frills floor cleaner that comes in a five-litre bottle with a ‘fresh’ fragrance. Its bright pink branding means you can’t miss it on supermarket shelves. Whether you want to or not is up for debate, with Handy Andy scoring just three stars for overall customer satisfaction in this year’s floor cleaner review. However, it did earn some respectable four-star ratings on effectiveness, product design and ease of use.

Mr Muscle

For a brand that specialises in oven-scrubbing, cleaning the floor should be a breeze for Mr Muscle. You can pick up Mr Muscle ‘1 in 5 Total Floor Cleaner’ in either 750mL or five-litre bottles, with a fresh lemon scent promised whichever way you go. The household-grade disinfectant is claimed to lift tough grease and kill 99.9% of germs you’d find on the floor. Aussie consumers are not convinced though, scoring Mr Muscle three stars for overall satisfaction, with a mixture of three and four stars across the board. It did achieve a four-star review in the all-important area of effectiveness, however.

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