2024 Ultimate Carpet Cleaner Buying Guide
We all know the feeling. You spend every day at home, thinking everything is clean and comfortable. Then, one day, you look around with fresh eyes and are shocked to notice some not-so pleasant surprises. A mysterious stain. A mountain of pet fur. The kind of set-in grime that can only come from the constant trampling of feet — and paws — across your carpet. To help you stay on top of things, we’ve put together an Ultimate Carpet Cleaner Buying Guide that can help you settle into a regular carpet-cleaning routine with the machines and products that will work best for you.
What is the Best Type of Carpet Cleaner for My Home?
Carpet cleaners come in a wide variety of sizes and formats. Choosing the right one for you depends on the jobs you want to get done. Whether it’s vacuuming and steaming an entire room of your home, or simply tackling trouble spots as they happen, there is a machine that’s right for you. Using the table below, you can compare the features of the most common carpet cleaners.
What to Look for in a Carpet Cleaner
In addition to considering how large of a space needs to be cleaned, there are a few other questions to ask yourself when looking for a machine. Do you need an upright deep cleaner, or something more portable? What type of brushes and additional tools do you need? How tough are the stains you want to tackle? Are we talking occasional puppy piddle, or set-in gunk from an era unknown? Whatever the case may be, there is a solution. To steer you to the one most helpful to you, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about BISSELL® carpet cleaners.
Brush Rolls
The type of brush roll on your carpet cleaner will greatly impact how it cleans. These are the most common types found on our machines:
Manual Brush Rolls
You’ll find these on many portable carpet cleaners, as well as attachments for both upright and portable machines. Unlike powered brush rolls, these tools need a little elbow grease to help agitate and loosen those sticky and stinky stains.
Rolling Brush Rolls
Look for them in all of our upright and professional-grade carpet cleaners. Once you power on the machine, the brush rolls start working to dig deep into the carpet fibers to lift and remove tough pet stains.
Size & Weight
The short answer: yes! At least from a cleaning and storage perspective. The size and weight of your machine will impact how you use it and where you store it. Upright and professional-grade carpet cleaners come with more cleaning power but also take up more space within your home. Portable carpet cleaners offer concentrated spot-cleaning power in a smaller and lighter format to get hard-to-reach spots and stains.
Hose Length & Included Tools
Our carpet cleaners come with a hose for cleaning above floors and hard-to-reach areas, like stairs and upholstery. Make sure you check the product description to ensure the hose length is long enough for your cleaning needs. Additionally, many of our cleaners also come with specialized tools to help tackle tough stains, spills, and messes. Here are some tools you should look for when shopping:
Powered TurboBrush® Tool
This powered rotating brush helps loosen and remove deep-down dirt from your carpet and upholstery.
3-in-1 Stair Tool
This tool is three-sided, which helps provide a deeper clean of stairs. The flat side works best on the top of stairs while the indented side is perfect for the stairs’ edges. Finally, the pointed side can be used to remove ground-in dirt from the stairs’ crevices.
2-in-1 Pet Upholstery Tool
This pet tool can be used in both wet and dry modes! In dry mode, this tool vacuums up pet hair and debris. In wet mode, it sprays, scrubs, and suctions away stains and pet odors.
Steam Cleaning Technology
For an even deeper clean on dirty carpets, opt for a steam carpet cleaner. Using the power of heat, water, and formula, a steam cleaner can remove imbedded stains or sticky messes better than a standard cleaner. BISSELL takes that a step further with an innovation called HydroSteam® Technology, which treats tough stuck-on and sticky messes in Pretreat Mode and helps clean oily messes up to 50% better. Learn more about HydroSteam® Technology here.
Revolution® HydroSteam® Pet Carpet Cleaner
Revolution® HydroSteam® Pet Carpet Cleaner is the only upright deep cleaner with the power of HydroSteam® Technology. Use it across an entire room of oily, sticky stains — you’ll instantly freshen up your space.
Little Green® HydroSteam® Portable Pet Cleaner
Little Green® HydroSteam® Portable Pet Cleaner gives you three powerful cleaning modes, as well as added portability and suction to better remove stuck-on pet messes and oily spills and stains from carpet, upholstery, and other surfaces.
Heatwave Technology®
If your carpet needs some extra TLC, look to this technology which allows you to have temperature-controlled water to clean more effectively. Normally, the water in your tank cools as your clean. But not our machines that come with Heatwave Technology®. It helps maintain the temperature of the water as you clean.
CleanShot® Pretreater
Stubborn pet stains require a little bit of extra prep. Enter pretreaters. Our CleanShot® pretreater, for starters, delivers a concentrated stream of cleaning solution directly to a heavily stained area. Because it’s so focused and powerful, you are setting the stage for a much deeper clean.
2-in-1 Capability
Blending the power of an upright with the convenience of a portable, these machines are great for homes with a little less storage but just as much mess. Although it might look like a normal upright machine, a 2-in-1 machine packs a bigger punch with the ability to detach from the base for use on harder-to-clean areas — like stairs, upholstery, and even your car.
Double Tanks Technology
Why does it matter that your cleaner has two tanks? Two-Tank Technology means your cleaner has both a clean and dirty water tank, ensuring you always clean with fresh water and solution. Both BISSELL® upright and portable carpet cleaners come with two-tank technology.
Tip: When looking at the carpet cleaner’s tanks, check the tank capacity in the product specs.
What Kind of Carpet Cleaner Do I Need?
The short answer: it depends on your mess! If your routine involves cleaning up everyday pet and kid messes (like spilled food or muddy paw prints) on carpet, stairs, or upholstery, you’ll be happy with a portable carpet cleaner. If you need to deep clean sticky or stinky stains (like pet yuck and trails) in multiple carpeted rooms, then an upright carpet cleaner or 2-in-1 is a better fit. If you’re cleaning an area with large, tough stains or wall-to-wall carpet, you may want a professional-grade cleaner.
The 411 on Upright Carpet Cleaners
When you think of a ‘carpet cleaner,’ this is probably the machine that comes to mind. Upright carpet cleaners are full-sized machines designed to remove stuck-in dirt, food stains and pet odors from wall-to-wall carpets, area rugs, upholstery, and stairs. They often come with attachments and tools to help scrub away and lift tough stains and messes wherever they happen. While some may think they can get away with not owning an upright carpet cleaner, those of us with pets know just how essential they are!
How do Upright Carpet Cleaners Work?
Upright carpet cleaners start the process by wetting your carpets with a mix of carpet shampoo (aka: cleaning formula) and water deep into fibers. Normally, the water is preheated before being added to the machine to maximize the effectiveness of the mixture.
While our carpet cleaners do not heat the water on their own, models like the ProHeat 2X® Revolution® deep cleaner help maintain a consistent temperature to boost cleaning power. Clever, right?
While our carpet cleaners do not heat the water on their own, models like the ProHeat 2X® Revolution® deep cleaner help maintain a consistent temperature to boost cleaning power. Clever, right?
Once the large areas have been cleaned, you can use your carpet cleaner’s attachments to clean harder-to-reach areas like upholstery and stairs.
Everything to Know About Portable Carpet Cleaners
These small machines are designed to help you clean accidental spills and stains quickly from anywhere — including stairs, upholstery, and your car. Like upright carpet cleaners, portable carpet cleaners come with a wide range of attachments for cleaning harder-to-reach areas. However, due to their capacity, portable carpet cleaners are not ideal for cleaning wall-to-wall carpets.
How do Portable Carpet Cleaners Work?
Much like upright cleaners, portable carpet cleaners release a mixture of preheated water (added by you) and carpet formula (or shampoo) to help remove spills, smells, and stains.
From there, a manual or spinning brush is used to work the mixture into the carpet fibers and loosen up the mess. Then, the portable carpet cleaner uses powerful suction to lift the dirty water into a separate tank.
One important thing to note is portable carpet cleaners use a different carpet formula than full-sized machines.
When Do You Need a Professional-Grade Carpet Cleaner?
Professional-grade carpet cleaners work very similarly to upright carpet cleaners but are specifically designed to clean large wall-to-wall carpeted areas in your home or commercial space. Their large capacity water tanks make them ideal for cleaning multiple rooms. In fact, our BISSELL® Big Green® carpet cleaner can hold up to 1.75 gallons of both clean and dirty water.
Not only do our professional-grade machines come with large capacity tanks, but they also have specialized brush rolls and longer hoses. For example, BISSELL® Big Green® carpet cleaner features an 8-Row XL DirtLifter® Powerbrush to dig deep into carpet fibers to loosen and lift away the toughest messes.
Like upright and portable carpet cleaners, professional-grade carpet cleaners come with useful attachments. Additionally, the longer hose makes cleaning above-floor surfaces — like stairs and upholstery — a breeze.
If owning one isn’t your thing, you’re in luck! BISSELL® professional-grade carpet cleaners can be rented, which is a great option for homes that are short on storage. Simply head over to BISSELL® Rental, enter your Zip code and find a location near you!
Frequently Asked Questions
Wrapping Up
Who knew there were so many types of carpet cleaners available? If you're unsure which one is suitable for your home, don't worry! You can use our chat feature and let our support specialist know your budget, home size, and the types of messes you need to clean. They will help you find the best match for your needs!