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.
Our pick
Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352
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
*At the time of publishing, the price was $200.
Our favorite all-around vacuum—for any type of flooring—is the Shark Navigator Lift-Away NV352, a reasonably priced and durable machine that 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. Even if you need to clean only bare floors right now, choosing this Shark is a good way to future-proof your vacuum purchase in case you end up needing to clean rugs or carpets someday.
Upgrade pick
Miele Classic C1 Pure Suction
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
*At the time of publishing, the price was $350.
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 V8 Fluffy Cordless Vacuum
This variant of one of our favorite cordless vacuums comes with a specialized soft-fabric cleaning head that’s excellent at cleaning all types of debris from any type of bare floor. This model won’t work well on rugs, but Dyson Absolute variants can.
Buying Options
*At the time of publishing, the price was $459.
A vacuum with a soft-fabric brush roll is another effective way to clean bare floors. Rather than trying to agitate and fling debris, as a typical brush roll does, the fluffy cylinder of a soft-fabric roll essentially hugs debris as it moves from the floor to the vacuum intake. The design works great for everything from fine, dusty debris all the way up to some big yard waste, like leaves and mulch. Several brands make these kinds of cleaning heads, but we have the most experience using Dyson’s, which we’ve found to be decent. The cordless Dyson V8 Fluffy gets the job done (and normally for less than $500), but it won’t work well on rugs because of its special head. If you need one vacuum that can work both on bare floors and on carpets, consider the Dyson V8 Absolute, which comes with a soft-fabric head plus a separate, standard stiff-bristle head that’s excellent on rugs.
You might also consider a robot vacuum. Most robovacs are great at cleaning bare floors—they’re arguably better than any human-powered vacuums because they persistently work longer hours without getting bored and find dust in hidden spaces that people usually ignore. Read more about these in our guide to the best robot vacuums.