What’s the Best Vacuum for Hardwood Floors

This nimble, high-tech model is light, powerful, and easy to maneuver. Its Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head is specifically designed to snag dust and fur from bare floors.

The Best Vacuums for Hardwood Floors of 2023

Recommendations are independently chosen by Reviewed’s editors. Purchases made through the links below may earn us and our publishing partners a commission.

Shark Apex AZ1002

The Shark Apex is a workhorse of a vacuum. It has powerful suction and plenty of features, but it’s loud and heavy. Read More

Pros

• Powerful suction
• Many attachments
• LED lights on the brush head

Cons

iRobot Roomba j7+

The iRobot Roomba j7+ boasts excellent navigation, forward-thinking smart features, and good cleaning performance. Read More

Pros

• Excellent navigation
• Easy storage
• Good cleaning performance

Cons

Dyson V11 Torque Drive

The V11 has powerful cleaning, great battery life, and unique features that set it apart from all other cordless vacuums: an LCD screen and an automatic suction adjustment. Read More

Pros

Cons

Shark Apex ZS362

The Shark Apex ZS362 is a lightweight vacuum that’s perfect for hardwood floors. Read More

Pros

• Lightweight
• Soft brush roll
• LED lights

Cons

Eufy G30 Edge

The Eufy G30 Edge is an all-around robot vacuum. It proved to have average cleaning performance and quick cycle times. Read More

Pros

• Fast cleaning cycles
• Barrier Included
• Average dirt pickup

Cons

Written by Jonathan Chan, senior manager of lab operations with a decade of experience testing products.

Updated September 13, 2023

Like granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors are a timeless classic in the home. However, as nice as it looks, hardwood flooring is much more temperamental than carpet when it comes to caring for and cleaning it.

We’re constantly testing new models of all types of vacuums, from cordless vacuums to robotic ones, to find ones that are worth your time and money. Among other things, we specifically test each vacuum for its ability to pick up debris and dirt off hardwood flooring without being too rough on it. If you’re looking for a true all-in-one vacuum, we suggest our winner, the Shark Apex AZ1002 (available at Amazon for $329.99) . It brings power and versatility while also being gentle.

We think most people will fall in love with the Shark Apex AZ1002

The Shark Apex AZ1002 lives up to its name as a top-of-the-line vacuum. Its unique DuoClean feature works great on carpet and hard floors alike, acing our debris tests and picking up pet hair better than vacuums that cost hundreds more.

At first glance, its spread of attachments seems pretty thin for a Shark vacuum—it comes with a crevice tool, an upholstery tool, and a motorized brush head. However, the versatility of the motorized brush more than makes up for any perceived loss with its incredible power and compact size.

Finally, the Apex picked up 54% of the dirt laid out for it, earning the best score of any Shark upright and landing in the upper third of all vacuums we’ve tested. When vacuuming, you generally run over the same patch of floor more than once, so a score of 54% means that a couple of passes should leave your floors in great shape.

Pros

• Powerful suction
• Many attachments
• LED lights on the brush head

Cons

We found the light that helps the j7+ navigate to be intrusive at times.

The iRobot Roomba j7+ is the gold standard for robot vacuum navigation and design, and works especially well as a vacuum for hardwood floors. In lab testing, its forward-facing cameras and machine learning helped it steer around everything from furniture legs to dog feces with ease. If you’ve had a robot vacuum before, you may know what a relief it is to be sure this one won’t cause more messes than it cleans.

The Roomba j7+’s navigation helps it cover the floor almost completely. It averages 9.35 grams of dirt per run, which means that after a week of daily use it’ll be roughly on par with a full-size vacuum. The iRobot Genius app can help you program specific courses of action, like cleaning the entrance after your kids come home from school, or cleaning under the dinner table after your meals.

When it’s done, the j7+ empties itself into a self-sealing bag so you don’t have to handle the dirt and grime it picks up.

Beyond being incredibly programmable, flexible, and thorough, the Roomba j7+ also looks great. The redesigned dock is far more likely to blend in with the average home decor, and the robot’s brushed metal top feels durable and looks slick.

The iRobot j7+ is a huge leap forward for robot vacuums in general, but its high-powered suction and advanced wayfinding make it particularly suited to keeping your hardwood floors kept up between deep cleanings.

Pros

• Excellent navigation
• Easy storage
• Good cleaning performance

Cons

The Dyson V11 Torque Drive is a good buy for those who demand excellence.

The Dyson V11 Torque Drive is a no-compromise cordless stick vacuum. It has powerful cleaning, great battery life, and features you won’t find anywhere else, including an LCD screen on its back and automatic suction adjustment that makes it a fantastic choice as a hardwood floor vacuum.

The LCD screen lets you know how much battery life you have left down to the second. This feature ensures you’ll never be caught short while vacuuming between cushions.

The V11’s self-adjusting suction feature is a little more subtle. When you’re cleaning, it lowers or increases the amount of suction based on the type of surface you’re cleaning. This increases battery life and helps keep this Dyson from scratching your hardwood. You can also manually select suction power.

Shiny new toys aside, the V11 Torque Drive is a stick vac that aces the basics. In testing, this Dyson picked up 95% of the dirt we laid out for it. The large debris tests also impressed us: A lot of vacuums just plow crumbs from one side of the room to the other, but the V11 has specialized gaps in its brush head to ensure pickup.

Finally, the Dyson V11 Torque Drive has specially-designed bristles for hardwood. Made of carbon fiber, these bristles disrupt static that causes dust to adhere to wood floors.

The Dyson V11 Torque Drive is as expensive as the top-tier full-size models in this guide, but price is the only downside, especially if you want a custom feature set tailored to maximizing cleaning performance and protection on your hardwood floors.

Pros

What’s the Best Vacuum for Hardwood Floors?

After a new round of testing, the Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction (a canister vacuum) is our pick for the best vacuum for hardwood floors.

The Miele Complete C3 Calima (a canister vacuum) is our upgrade pick, and the Dyson V12 Detect Slim (a cordless stick vac) remains our also-great pick.

Any vacuum can clean hardwood floors—this is the simplest possible task for a vacuum cleaner. You don’t need anything special to get dust, hair, crumbs, or anything else off your wood, tile, or laminate floors. But some vacuums do it a little better than others. To avoid scattering debris or possibly damaging sensitive flooring, look for a model that either lets you switch off the spinning brush roll or has a special soft-fabric brush roll or no brush roll at all.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352

Great on all types of floors

Our longtime favorite upright vacuum works well for most homes, with adjustable features that make it effective on both hardwood floors and other surfaces.

Buying Options

Upgrade pick

Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction

The absolute best for hardwood floors

This nimble vacuum for hardwood floors and low-pile carpeting includes tools designed to do the job right. It has given one Wirecutter editor a decade of excellent, trouble-free cleaning.

Buying Options

Also great

Dyson V12 Detect Slim

Light, nimble, and powerful

This nimble, high-tech model is light, powerful, and easy to maneuver. Its Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head is specifically designed to snag dust and fur from bare floors.

Buying Options

You save $230 (37%)

How we picked

Although hardwood floors are the easiest thing to vacuum, strong suction is still key to cleaning them quickly and thoroughly.

To avoid scattering debris, you should be able to turn off the carpet-cleaning brush roll, if the vacuum has one.

Our pick

Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352

Great on all types of floors

Our longtime favorite upright vacuum works well for most homes, with adjustable features that make it effective on both hardwood floors and other surfaces.

Buying Options

Our favorite all-around vacuum—for any type of flooring—is the Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352. This reasonably priced, durable machine has always performed very well in our cleaning tests on all surfaces, including bare floors. You can toggle the brush roll on or off, so it won’t send hard debris like cat litter or breakfast cereal shooting across the room when you’re cleaning wood, linoleum, or tile. And even if you currently need to clean only bare floors, if you do end up needing to clean rugs or carpets someday, this Shark vacuum will future-proof your purchase.

Upgrade pick

Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction

The absolute best for hardwood floors

This nimble vacuum for hardwood floors and low-pile carpeting includes tools designed to do the job right. It has given one Wirecutter editor a decade of excellent, trouble-free cleaning.

Buying Options

If you don’t plan to clean rugs (or at least not thick ones), you can get a vacuum that’s purpose-built for cleaning bare floors. These are most often “suction-only” models, without a brush roll. One suction-only vacuum that we’re really fond of is the Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction. Miele canister vacuums are known to last for decades, run quieter than almost any other vacuum, and have great filtration. The Classic C1 Pure Suction is the lowest-priced Miele canister model you can buy. It has a suction-only cleaning head (no brush roll) with soft bristles around the edges that let it glide smoothly across bare floors. The strong suction allows it to work pretty well on low-pile rugs, too.

Also great

Dyson V12 Detect Slim

Light, nimble, and powerful

This nimble, high-tech model is light, powerful, and easy to maneuver. Its Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head is specifically designed to snag dust and fur from bare floors.

Buying Options

You save $230 (37%)

Another effective way to clean bare floors is to use a vacuum with a soft-fabric brush roll. Rather than trying to agitate and fling debris, as a typical brush roll does, a fluffy brush roll essentially hugs debris as it moves from the floor to the vacuum intake. Several companies make these kinds of cleaner heads, but in our tests the Dyson V12 Detect Slim performed the best.

The V12 Detect Slim’s Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head has a microfiber brush roll that is specifically designed to suck up dust and fur from bare floors while also protecting sensitive surfaces—including wood floors—from scratches. Its separate Motorhead cleaner head has bristles and hair-removal vanes that work well on carpets and rugs. This model has several high-tech features that make it almost fun to use; these include a sensor that automatically adjusts suction, a laser headlight that illuminates dust in dim corners, and an LCD screen with a battery countdown and particle counter.

The research

• Why you should trust us
• What makes the best hardwood-floor vacuum?
• A suitable vacuum for hardwood (or any other) flooring: Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352
• What about a super-cheap stick vacuum with no brush roll?
• Upgrade pick for a hardwood-floor vacuum: Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction
• Also great: A soft-fabric brush roll, like that of the Dyson V12 Detect Slim
• Consider a robot vacuum, too
• What to look forward to
• Frequently asked questions

Why you should trust us

Writer Liam McCabe conducted research and testing for this guide and others. Liam tested more than 100 models on all kinds of surfaces—including wood, linoleum, laminate, and tile.

Staff writer Sabine Heinlein covers vacuums and floor care for Wirecutter and has written guides to handheld and cordless stick vacuums, among others.

What makes the best hardwood-floor vacuum?

Any decent vacuum can keep hardwood floors tidy. Keep in mind, however, that with a cheaper model, you might have to make two or three passes, and it might not grab the smallest (fine dust) or largest (yard waste) debris. Certain features can make the job easier, though.

Strong suction and airflow are a huge help in picking up debris on the first try, particularly the very small or large stuff.

Beyond that, you need a vacuum that won’t force you to use a carpet-cleaning brush all the time. A spinning brush roll with stiff bristles is great for rugs because it agitates the carpet fibers, digging up the hair and dust so that the vacuum can suck the stuff up. But this kind of brush can be counterproductive on bare floors because it scatters some kinds of debris before the vacuum can suck it up. In extreme cases, a too-harsh brush can scratch softer types of stone, tile, or wood flooring.

Many vacuums have an on/off switch for their brush rolls, so you can just shut down the brush roller when you’re cleaning bare floors and turn it back on if you transition to a rug. Some models have cleaning heads with no brush rolls at all, while a few others come with a specialty soft-fabric brush roll that’s purpose-built for cleaning bare floors—neither of these types is great on rugs, though some models give you the option to switch between different heads for different surfaces.

Some cleaning heads also have subtle features that help scooch bigger debris toward the vacuum’s intake. These features might include a small apron (or flap) on the sides or near the rear of the head, side-mounted bristles (or even tiny air intakes to corral bits from baseboards and corners), or gates at the front of the head to give passage to big debris (like Froot Loops cereal, for example).

You can read more about what makes for a powerful, versatile vacuum in our guide to plug-in upright and canister vacuums.

A suitable vacuum for hardwood (or any other) flooring: Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352

Our pick

Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352

Great on all types of floors

Our longtime favorite upright vacuum works well for most homes, with adjustable features that make it effective on both hardwood floors and other surfaces.

Buying Options

The Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352 has been our pick for the best vacuum for eight years running, and it’s a great vacuum for hardwood floors and carpets alike. Its powerful suction cleans both surfaces very well, and smart design features let you easily optimize its performance on each.

The Navigator allows you to turn off its brush roll with an easy flick of the three-position switch. When the brush is powered down, the vacuum doesn’t scatter debris across bare floors.

You can turn the brush roll off by switching the power button to the bare-floor setting. Photo: Michael Hession

You can turn on the brush roll (visible here through the window on the vacuum’s cleaning head) when you need to dig dirt out of carpets. Photo: Sarah Kobos

You can turn the brush roll off by switching the power button to the bare-floor setting. Photo: Michael Hession

In our bare-floor tests, the Navigator Lift-Away performed as well as any machine at picking up cat hair, dried chickpeas, ground coffee, shredded paper, sawdust, and sand in just a few passes. We were particularly impressed by how quickly and completely it picked up cat litter from a bare floor (in a single back-and-forth pass). The Shark’s side-suction performance (that is, its ability to pick up debris from the left and right sides of the floorhead) also stood out: It picked up almost all of the lentils and cat litter we had scattered into a corner and up against baseboards, outperforming even some high-end vacuums we’ve tested in that regard.

Bissell Featherweight 2033

Dirt-cheap and fine for bare floors

We don’t actually like super-cheap stick vacuums, but if you have only bare floors to tidy, this super-basic vacuum will do the job quicker than a broom and is not much more expensive. It’s a suction-only vacuum, with no brush roll for cleaning rugs.

Buying Options

May be out of stock

Any vacuum without a brush roll works pretty well on bare floors—even a bargain-bin model like the Bissell Featherweight 2033. We aren’t really endorsing this vacuum, but if you want something for the occasional easy cleanup, this Bissell works fine.

The Bissell Featherweight is impressively lightweight and conveniently bagless, and it converts into a (corded) handheld vacuum. It has solid ratings on the websites of most retailers, and cleaning with it is definitely easier than using a broom.

But this Bissell snowplows big debris, can’t suck the fine dust out from the cracks in your floorboards, and might take a few passes for the weak-ish suction to pick up heavier debris like breakfast cereal or even cat litter. Obviously, it’s near-worthless on almost any kind of rug, apart from grabbing surface-level debris on flatweave. And surprise, surprise: It’s not a well-built, durable product, either. You’re usually better off spending more money on a better vacuum, but if you need a cheap backup stick vac, the Featherweight is okay.

Upgrade pick for a hardwood-floor vacuum: Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction

Upgrade pick

Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction

The absolute best for hardwood floors

This nimble vacuum for hardwood floors and low-pile carpeting includes tools designed to do the job right. It has given one Wirecutter editor a decade of excellent, trouble-free cleaning.

Buying Options

The Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction is the most basic, lowest-priced vacuum in Miele’s extensive lineup of canister vacuums. Although it doesn’t work well on thick rugs, it’s exceptionally effective and comfortable to use on bare floors.

The C1 series uses the same 1,200-watt motor that’s found in fancier Miele models (including our upgrade pick for carpets, the Complete C3 Calima), and the same dust-trapping bags and air filter. It uses the AllTeQ floorhead, which features bristles that you can extend or retract, so it’s excellent on bare floors and solid on flat-weave or low-pile rugs, too. The wide floorhead does a superb job of digging dust and pet hair out of cracks and grout lines. (The vacuum is even strong enough to pull debris out of short rugs.) And because the floorhead has no roller, let alone an electric motor, it’s lightweight, low-profile, and easy to maneuver under furniture and into corners.

The Miele Classic C1 is much quieter than many vacuums, at 57 to 68 decibels (depending on the power setting)—compare that with 78 decibels on the Shark, which is more typical of a plug-in vacuum. The canister also rolls very quietly and smoothly on all flooring. The C1 is a bagged vacuum, but in most homes (without too many long-haired pets) the filter bags last for months and trap a huge amount of debris before needing replacement (an indicator on the canister tells you when); a box of four costs about $20.

Miele has a wider service network than any other premium vacuum brand, so you’re more likely to find a place capable of patching up your vacuum if it needs a midlife tune-up. (You should still double-check whether there’s a qualified technician near you.)

You can read more about Miele vacuums and why we think they’re often worth the extra cost in our guide to plug-in vacuums.

Also great: A soft-fabric brush roll, like that of the Dyson V12 Detect Slim

Also great

Dyson V12 Detect Slim

Light, nimble, and powerful

This nimble, high-tech model is light, powerful, and easy to maneuver. Its Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head is specifically designed to snag dust and fur from bare floors.

Buying Options

You save $230 (37%)

Soft-fabric brush rolls (they look like they’re covered in velour) are another good way to clean bare floors. They’re mostly found in cordless vacuums, which tend to have less suction than plug-ins, so the extra cleaning action really helps the performance. Fabric brushes can pick up debris of all sizes, everything from dust to leaves or even small mulch, by “hugging” it toward the intake rather than flinging it across the room. But they don’t work well on rugs, and the fabric can get dirty over time and isn’t always easy to clean.

Of all the models we’ve tested, the nimble and powerful Dyson V12 Detect Slim comes closest to being the ideal cordless stick vacuum. It has two separate cleaner heads, one of which is specifically designed to target dust and fur on bare floors. The V12 Detect Slim maneuvers easily in awkward spaces and on stairs, and it is very quiet compared with other models. Whereas previous Dyson models featured an uncomfortable trigger-style switch that you had to squeeze to operate the vac, the V12 Detect Slim has an on/off button.

Made of soft microfiber fabric, the Laser Slim Fluffy cleaner head features a laser light that spookily illuminates dark corners, spotlighting dust and fur. The Motorhead, on the other hand, agitates dirt embedded in carpets, preparing it to be ferreted up the tube and into the dustbin. In our testing, we also found that the Fluffy head picked up larger debris that the Motorbar head tended to snowplow. Both V12 Detect Slim cleaner heads swivel 180 degrees, so you can reach into tight corners, around table legs, and between furniture better than with other vacuums we’ve tested.

The V12 Detect Slim easily converts into a handheld vacuum and comes with helpful attachments for tasks around the home and in the car. Its mini motorized brush tool was one of the best we tested for removing pet hair from couches, cat beds, and car upholstery. Its combination tool allowed for quick switching between a wide nozzle and a brush; we found the brush particularly handy for dusting bookshelves and windowsills.

In our guide to cordless stick vacuums, you can read more about Dyson and other brands of cordless vacuums, and why they’re a treat to use but a huge burden on your bank account.