The Best Cleaning Cloths for Efficient and Careful Cleaning

Which cloth for which job?

One table, and you know what to reach for the rest of the year.

Glass, tiles, wood, stainless steel, mirrors, ceramic and plastic all respond well to microfibre. Where you used to see streaks after wiping, now nothing is left behind. All sizes and colours are with the Wonder Cloths.

Microfibre or cotton: when do you reach for which?

Cotton slides, microfibre grips. That is the whole difference in four words.

Everything is already grouped by job: windows and mirrors, bathroom cleaning, kitchen cleaning, floors, laundry and textiles, cooking. If you would rather see it all at once, have a look at cleaning.

A microfibre cloth is made up of thousands of tiny fibres that each catch a particle of dirt and hold on to it until you rinse the cloth out. Cotton mostly pushes dirt and water ahead of it. That is why you get a streak-free result with microfibre and water alone, and why with cotton you need a product. And that product is precisely what leaves the streaks.

Cotton does have its place: it is sturdy and takes up large amounts of liquid. For a knocked-over glass or a mopping session that is handy. For glass, high gloss, paintwork and anything where you want a clear result, microfibre wins.

Anyone with sensitive airways or an allergy tends to notice that difference first. A room that only looked clean before now genuinely feels fresher, because the fine dust is in the cloth and not in the air.

Kitchen: lifting grease instead of smearing it

In the kitchen it comes down to two things: grease and hygiene. You want to lift grease off the worktop and the hob without leaving a thin film of it behind, and you want the cloth to work just as well after the wash as it did before.

That works with a cloth that takes water up quickly, so the worktop is left dry and fresh straight away. With water alone you lift 99.9% of bacteria off the surface, without your kitchen smelling of cleaning products. Do give the kitchen its own colour of cloth, so the bathroom cloth never ends up on the worktop.

Bathroom: preventing limescale instead of scrubbing it off

Limescale streaks appear because water sits on the wall, the door or the tap and dries there. Take that water away straight away and limescale gets no chance, so there is nothing to scrub later.

That is what the Drying Towel is made for: the M size takes up to 800 ml of water and pulls a shower screen dry in a few strokes. For the tiles, the taps and the mirror you reach for a Wonder Cloth with a tighter grip, which lifts limescale and soap residue without any product.

Living room: dust, wood and delicate surfaces

Dust is a dry job. A dry microfibre cloth holds the dust instead of moving it around the room, and that saves you the second round an hour later. On wood, paintwork and screens a soft, tightly woven cloth is the most comfortable, because it presses evenly and so leaves no haze.

One thing matters on delicate surfaces: use a cloth with neat edges. A frayed edge is the only part of a microfibre cloth that can leave a scratch.

The car, the office and large surfaces

Car windows on the inside are the hardest windows there are, because they carry a thin film that every ordinary cloth just moves around. A damp microfibre cloth lifts that film, and the Drying Towel takes the last of the moisture away before it can dry on.

With desks, glass partitions and meeting tables it comes down to the same thing: hold the dust and get a large surface streak-free in one movement. For that you would rather have one big cloth than three small ones, so the Drying Towel M, 60 x 40 cm. For smaller corners and mirrors the Drying Towel S, 30 x 40 cm is handier.

How many cloths do you actually need?

Fewer than you think per job, more than you think per house.

For most households this works: one colour for the kitchen, one for the bathroom, one for glass and mirrors, and one for dusting and furniture. Then everyone in the house knows which cloth belongs where, and that is the simplest hygiene measure there is.

Which is why most people move on from their first pack of four to the value pack fairly quickly: twelve Wonder Cloths are three packs of four, enough to give every room its own set and still keep a clean stack in the cupboard. Want to try it out first? Then start with the Starter Pack of 4.

Why a cloth within reach gets you cleaning more often

This is the effect almost nobody counts. If nothing is ready to hand, you put it off until Saturday. If there is a clean cloth ready that needs no preparation, you wipe the worktop down before you sit.

Dirt builds up far less that way, and cleaning becomes a two-minute job instead of an hour-long one. For how your home ends up looking, that counts at least as much as the cleaning power of the cloth itself.

How to keep them doing what they did on day one

A saturated cloth moves dirt around instead of taking it up, and you see that again as streaks. So wash them regularly, and stick to four things: 40 degrees, no fabric softener, no tumble dryer, and separate from cotton towels.

That keeps the fibre structure open and they will last for years. What else to look for when judging a cloth is in What is the best microfibre cloth?, and the full washing advice is in the care instructions.

Frequently asked questions