Carpet cleaners: How we test
Dirty carpets
We measure carpets' brightness, then soil them with everyday spills
We take identical samples of carpet and measure their brightness using a spectrophotometer. We soil them with everyday spills, let the carpet cleaners loose and measure how bright they are afterwards. In all we take nearly 500 brightness readings.
Drying out
We weigh the carpets before and after we soil them. We weigh them again after cleaning to find out how much water has been left. In all we record the weight of carpets 240 times.
Thrills and spills
Cleaning with the hand held nozzle
We spill 10ml each of coffee, gravy and red wine on pieces of carpet, and let the stains dry for 24 hours before we see how well the machines tackle the stains.
Suction stations
For multi-function cleaners, we record the amount of dust they pick up and how much leaks back out. We also put them through their paces against pet hairs.
See also our report on vacuum cleaners to see how we test their performance in tackling pet hair.