5 Best Floor Scrubbers – 2022 Buying Guide

If you have hard floors throughout your home such as wood, tile, and vinyl, you are probably thinking about the best way to keep them clean and hygienic without breaking your back with a mop and pail. In this article we test and choose the five best floor scrubbers for 2022.

But what should you be looking for in a domestic floor scrubber, and how exactly do you use one? We’ll answer all your questions below as we review the five best floor scrubbers for residential use currently on the market and provide a comprehensive buying guide. We’ll also delve into exactly how to use a scrubber to keep all of your hard floors spic and span.

Our Top Picks

1. Best Overall: Bissell Spinwave Powered Floor Mop and Cleaner 2039A
2. Best Cordless: Gladwell Cordless Electric Mop
3. Best Scrubber Brush: Homitt Electric Spin Scrubber Brush
4. Best Budget: GOBOT Cordless Electric Scrubber
5. Best High-End: Hoover FloorMate Deluxe Hardwood Floor Cleaner

Floor Scrubber Buying Advice

• Reviews of Our Top 5 Floor Scrubber Picks
• Side by Side Comparison
• The Complete Floor Scrubber Buyer’s Guide
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
• Final Thoughts

Best Overall: Bissell Spinwave Powered Floor Mop and Cleaner 2039A

If you are looking for a machine that represents value for money and can be used to effectively clean pretty much any hard surface in your home, then look no further than the BISSELL.

While it looks like a fairly standard mop, it is actually a mini commercial-grade scrubber with 0.9 ampere power. It matches the two rotating pads with an on-demand spray for feeding your preferred cleaning product onto the floor in just the right amount.

It comes with two scrubbing pads and two soft pads for buffing, all of which are machine washable for reuse. The pads are suitable for use on tile, sealed wood, laminate, linoleum, and vinyl.

The way the spinning heads move means the mop is self-propelling, so it should not take a lot of strength and effort to push it around, though it can sometimes get out of control. It should be attended at all times. It is a good idea to ensure the tank is always relatively full of water to make the mop a bit heavier and a bit easier to maneuver.

The 22-foot cord gives you plenty of length to move. There is a cordless option available from BISSELL, but it is quite a bit more expensive.

If you do need to stop, simply place the mop in an upright position; it will auto-stop so you can tend to any household emergencies.

This scrubber is about average size for a domestic product with a mop head of 14 inches. This is big enough to clean quickly but small enough to mean you can get into all but the tightest corners; however, you won’t get this one behind the toilet.

The main downside with this product is that it is only recommended to use BISSELL’s own cleaning solution and water, which represents an ongoing expense. The liquid release also takes some getting used to, and the first few times you use it, you may soak your floors.

Nevertheless, this is a good quality domestic scrubber at an affordable price that can do most home surfaces, which is why it is our top pick.

Best Cordless: Gladwell Cordless Electric Mop

If you are looking for ultimate ease of use and hate being tied down by a cord, then check out this top-end cordless spinner, scrubber, and waxer from Gladwell.

This is another high-powered scrubber, which is surprisingly quiet when in use. It is cordless and only takes about two hours to reach full charge and will clean continuously for almost as long after that.

It combines a flat base that is only about three inches tall and a handle that rotates 180 degrees, so you can get in and under everything. It also makes storage easy. It is just the right weight to glide around easily, and it is easy to control liquid distribution with the hand controls.

The machine is versatile, with different settings and pads for quick spray, mopping, and waxing, so really you should be able to do all the hard floors in your home with just this one machine. The pads are all machine washable.

The main downside with this machine is that it is expensive, at around $170. While it is an excellent machine, it can feel like you are paying for unnecessary features, like an LED light at the front of the mop.

But if you are happy to pay a little more, you won’t find many domestic scrubber machines better than this option from Gladwell.

Best Scrubber Brush: Homitt Electric Spin Scrubber Brush

If you find cleaning your hard floors physically grueling, and you are specifically looking to lighten the load on your body, then try this lightweight and maneuverable model from Homitt.

This scrubber is relatively powerful, spinning at 120 to 150 times per minute, which should be more than enough to buff away any stains. It also has a relatively large 300 ml tank capacity, and liquid is easily dispensed with the hand controls.

The mop takes between three and four hours to charge and will give you about 45 minutes of continuous cleaning time, which should be more than enough for the majority of homes.

Thanks to being cordless, this is one of the easiest to maneuver options on the market. It is also one of the few scrubbers that has an adjustable height, so you can make it a comfortable tool for you.

This is also one of the lightest scrubbers you will find, weighing less than three pounds before water is added. While this can mean you need to provide a bit of force to get good contact with the grown, few users have reported problems with this.

The scrubber comes with two scrubbing pads and two mop pads, neither of which should leave scratches on your floor. They are machine washable for regular re-use.

The main drawback of this model is the compact design, meaning the battery is on the mop head. So, you need to be careful about how wet it gets in order to protect the battery.

But if you want something that makes cleaning your floors easy and lifts the strain of scrubbing from your body, there are few better options than this Homitt.

Best Budget: GOBOT Cordless Electric Scrubber

If you are looking for a scrubber that will work well in your home, but you are on a budget, then check out this cordless electric option from GOBOT.

This is a classic two spinning pad scrubber that is designed to work on any hard floors including tiles, wood, vinyl, laminate, and linoleum. It is moderately quiet at 30-45 watts, so you don’t need to feel restricted about when you clean your floors.

The machine has different settings for mopping, waxing, and quick cleanup, and it comes with two sets of pads, both of which are washable up to 100 times.

The scrubber is also cordless, and it only takes three to four hours to reach full charge, which then offers 90 to 120 minutes of cleaning time, which should be more than enough for most homes.

The main drawback with the GOBOT is that it is not as powerful as other models and also not as sturdy, so you do need to be careful how you handle it. It is lightweight at less than three pounds before water is added, but it won’t stand up against too much physical pressure to try and make contact with the floor.

Nevertheless, this scrubber is one of the best affordable machines on the market. With a bit of care, it is a great solution for anyone on a budget.

Best High-End: Hoover FloorMate Deluxe Hardwood Floor Cleaner BH55210A

This deluxe model from Hoover can be considered the Rolls Royce of scrubbers. It is much more expensive than most other options on our list, but it certainly has all the bells and whistles.

This Hoover model uses patented spin scrub brush technology to get floors sparkling clean. It matches this up with three different cleaning modes: vacuum, wash, and dry. This means that you can focus on sucking up spills or cleaning baked-on stains in grout all with the same excellent machine.

It also has a dual tank, so you can feed clean water and pull dirty water without needing to make any changes to the machine set up.

While the machine is a lot bigger than all the other options on this list, its clever design means it still doesn’t take up that much space when you are storing it. But it is heavy as well, at 23 pounds before water is added. So, not everyone will want to be carrying it up and down stairs.

The main downside with this machine is that the brushes are not as easy to clean as with the simpler machines. Rather than just throwing something in the wash, the brushes do need to be removed and clean.

But if you are looking for the best and most powerful cleaning machine, that seems like a small price to pay. The Hoover is the ultimate scrubber model for cleaning all home hard floors.

Side by Side Comparison

Product	Our Rating	Key Features
Bissell Spinwave Powered Floor Mop 2039A View on Bissell –> View on Amazon –>	Best Overall Overall: 4.7	Electric powered spinning pads On-demand spray Auto-stop 2-year limited warranty
Gladwell Cordless Electric Mop View on Amazon –> View on Walmart –>	Best Cordless Overall: 4.3	Spinner, scrubber, and waxer Cordless On-demand spray Unspecified satisfaction guarantee
Homitt Electric Spin Scrubber Brush View on Walmart –> View on Overstock –>	Best Scrubber Brush Overall: 4.6	Electric powered spinning pads Cordless Adjustable height 12-month warranty
GOBOT Cordless Electric Scrubber View on Amazon –> View on Wish –>	Best Budget Overall: 4.2	Electric spinning pads Cordless Affordable Full 1-year unlimited warranty
Hoover FloorMate Deluxe View on Amazon –> View on Acme Tools –>	Best High-End Overall: 4.1	Spinning scrub brushes Triple mode vacuum, wash, and dry Dual-action tank 2-year limited warranty

Back to Top

The Complete Floor Scrubber Buyer’s Guide

• What Kind of Floor Area Will You Be Cleaning?
• What Kind of Material Is Your Floor Made From?
• FAQs

Floor scrubbers are machines much like a vacuum cleaner but used to clean and buff hard floors. You often see commercial scrubbers in large warehouses that are ride-ons. But the ones you can get for your home are more like heavy-duty, electric mops.

They can be used on a wide variety of hard floors including concrete, laminate, hardwood, vinyl, marble, and tile floors.

Check out our guides on how to clean hardwood, tile, laminate, and vinyl plank flooring.

There are lots of different options on the market, all that work in slightly different ways. So, before you go shopping, you need to know exactly what you are going to use your scrubber on. Only that way can you balance the features of a machine against how much it will set you back.

The main questions that you should ask yourself before starting to look at scrubbers are:

What Kind of Floor Area Will You Be Cleaning?

• Is it big? You may benefit from a scrubber with a larger head to clean more quickly. You might also prefer a cordless option, as long as it has a nice long charge.
• Are there small nooks and crannies? Even if you have a big space overall, if you have a lot of small corners, you might want something with a smaller head so you can get into the corners.

What Kind of Material Is Your Floor Made From?

• Types
• Versatility
• Performance
• Maneuverability
• Accessories and Parts
• Cost
• How To Use a Floor Scrubber
• Different floors will have different requirements in terms of cleaning, and you should always follow the guidelines for your specific floors. For example, while tile can manage heavy-duty cleaning, hardwood floors will need a much lighter touch.

Once you have this in your head, you can start to look at the scrubbers themselves The main features that you should be looking at include:

Types

When it comes to commercial floor scrubbers, there are a variety of types, mainly differentiated by the number of rotary disks that are doing the scrubbing, whether they are hand managed or ride on.

But almost all domestic floor scrubbers are two-disk rotary machines that are electrically powered. You do get some variation, but it is relatively rare.

Versatility

Unless you have the same types of floors throughout your home, you will probably want to be able to use the same machine to tackle different types of hard floors: maybe tile in the kitchen and bathroom, engineered hardwood in the bedrooms, and vinyl in the playroom.

Look at what floors you have, and then you can prioritize which tools you need. In addition to scrubbing, these machines can be used for polishing, vacuuming, waxing, and even stripping. But you need to know what you need. There is not much point in paying more for a machine that can do stripping if this is not functionality that you need.

Performance

Here we are referring to scrubbing speed and power source, both of which are vital to a good machine.

The pads that do the scrubbing need to move fast enough to wash away stains and buff floors to perfection. You certainly want something that can work a lot faster than you can by hand. At a minimum, you probably want a machine that offers between 120 and 150 revolutions per minute, though faster is even better. Bear in mind that commercial machines generally do between 400 and 2,000 revs per minute.

The power of the machine dictates the limits of its speed. This is not majorly problematic with corded machines, but becomes more important with cordless where you will be working off battery power when actually cleaning.

You can expect the battery on this type of machine to take anywhere from two to four hours to charge, which should offer a minimum of one hour’s cleaning time, and two hours is even better.

Maneuverability

You will be pushing this machine around your floors, so you will want to make sure this is something you can physically do, both in terms of your strength and the shape of your home.

Generally speaking, the larger the cleaning head of the scrubber, the faster it will work and the less time it will take you to clean your home. But, of course, the larger the head, the harder it is to get into every corner. If you know you have a lot of small spaces to deal with, it is worth considering a small model.

Weight is also an important question. Clearly you want something that is light enough that you can carry and move it around easily. Also, don’t forget, the machine will get significantly heavier when you fill the water tank.

But at the same time, you don’t want anything that is too light. You need to get good pressure between the machine and the floors, and it can be hard to achieve this with the super, lightweight models.

In order to be able to move your machine around effectively, you might want to look for rubberized wheels, which allow you to guide without leaving marks or scratches as you move around.

Ergonomic handles can also help, so your wrists and arms don’t get overly sore if you have a large home with a lot of space to do.

Accessories and Parts

While most good scrubbers come with washable and reusable accessories, and hopefully you won’t need to start thinking about replacement parts for quite some time, it is worth considering that from the outset.

Cleaning pads usually have a lifespan of up to 100 washes, and you might start to feel they aren’t offering the same performance before then. You should make sure replacement pads won’t cost an arm and a leg, making your bargain purchase prohibitively expensive in the long run.

When it comes to parts, you should mainly look at the availability of batteries and motors, as these tend to be the parts that wear out first. While you might not expect these to be cheap, at least check they are available and not something that will be difficult to import from abroad.

Cost

Naturally, when looking at a floor scrubber for your home, you are going to look at how much it costs.

A domestic floor scrubber will cost anywhere between $60 and $200. The more expensive models tend to be more powerful, which means they are more effective as cleaners. The more expensive options also tend to have a wider range of functionality, for example, vacuuming and waxing in addition to scrubbing and buffing.

What price range is right for you depends on how big and how complicated a cleaning task your home presents.

How To Use a Floor Scrubber

Most domestic floor scrubbers combine the washing and buffing power of fast rotating pads with small amounts of water, sometimes with detergent solutions mixed in.

You move the scrubber around the floor much like a vacuum cleaner, covering the full area of the floor. Most machines will have a button on the handle for releasing the water/cleaning solution to scrub away stains and also act as a lubricant. Very little water is used and is mostly picked up and taken away by the cleaning pads, leaving the floors relatively dry and clean behind them.

Most machines will also have waxing and buffing options that will not use liquid but just the movement of the pads to leave the floor looking shiny.

More sophisticated machines will have other options, such as vacuuming, and will come with their own specific instructions.

Generally speaking, the cleaning pads on the machine should be cleaned after every use. The majority are machine washable.

Back to Top

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Final Thoughts

Floor scrubbers are a great way to keep hard floors in your home clean and hygienic. They are appropriate for most hard floors including tile, linoleum, hardwood, and vinyl. They use intense buffing action and a small amount of cleaning liquid to quickly clean floors and leave them dry.

Most domestic floor scrubbers are about the size and weight of a vacuum cleaner and cost around the same amount as well. This makes them a vital addition to any home that enjoys hard floors.

When choosing your scrubber, make sure you know what you need so you can get the right machine for you. Consider how much floor space you need to clean, what your floor is made from, and how difficult it is to navigate. With this in mind, you can then start with our top five floor scrubbers, all of which do a good job, and will show you the types of features you should be considering.

We do recommend the BISSELL Spinwave cleaner as the overall best option on the market if you are looking for an all-rounder.

If you have any comments or first-hand experiences with floor scrubbers for the home, please post them below or share your pictures via our social media.

Back to Top