Best stain removers: six compared, and the law says you should be able to read the ingredients

Try your detergent first, because the evidence says it probably wins. Modern biological powders already contain the same enzymes and the same sodium percarbonate that a dedicated stain remover contains. Stiftung Warentest tested twenty three stain removers, rated two of them good, and found that a good full wash powder beat every one of them. The Australian consumer body CHOICE included a control with no stain remover at all and reported that three of the sprays were barely any better than using nothing. More detergent, a longer soak and a warmer wash is a free experiment and it works more often than the aisle suggests.

Match the chemistry to the stain, because no single product does all three jobs. Protein stains, meaning blood, egg, milk, sweat and grass, are broken down by enzymes and are set permanently by heat, so cold water first and never a hot wash until the mark has gone. Tannin stains, meaning tea, coffee, wine and fruit, are bleached by oxygen and want warmth. Grease needs a surfactant and often a solvent. A tub of percarbonate is excellent at the second, mediocre at the first and poor at the third, whatever the front of the pack claims.

Oxygen bleach needs heat, and most people wash at 30. Sodium percarbonate releases hydrogen peroxide in water, and that reaction is temperature dependent. Below 40 degrees it is sluggish unless the formula contains enough TAED, the activator that makes low temperature bleaching possible. Only one product in this comparison names TAED in its own ingredient list. The rest simply assert that they work cold, and the packs contradict each other and occasionally themselves: one brand advertises working at 30 on the front while instructing a 40 degree soak on the back, and one supermarket sells the same powder in two sizes with two different temperature instructions.

Read the hazard label, because it is stronger than people expect. Five of the six here carry H318, causes serious eye damage, with the signal word Danger. One adds H315 skin irritation, H272 may intensify fire, and H302 harmful if swallowed. One carries H410, very toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects, on a product designed to go down the drain. These are laundry products that live in a cupboard next to the machine, often at floor level, and the warnings on them are more serious than most people assume.

Understand what optical brighteners actually do. They are fluorescent dyes that absorb ultraviolet light and re emit it as visible blue, which cancels the yellow cast that old cotton develops. They make fabric look whiter. They remove nothing. Whites formulas here contain them and colours formulas mostly do not, which is the real difference between the two products. That is not fraud, it is how the whole category works, but a good part of what you are buying in a whites powder is an optical effect rather than a cleaning one. They also persist in wastewater, which is the more substantial objection to them.

The ingredient list is a legal duty, so check whether the brand meets it. Annex VII of the detergents regulation requires manufacturers to make an ingredient data sheet available on a website, and states that access must not be subject to any restriction or condition. Of seven brands we checked, one publishes a genuine full list. The market leader points at a portal where the products endpoint redirects to a login and the ingredients page returns a not found error. Another publishes a document where twenty five of twenty eight rows read as a spreadsheet error. When a maker will not tell you what is in a product that touches everything you wear, that is information in itself.

Buy on price per 100 grams, not price per tub. The range in this comparison runs from 19.9p to £1.10 per 100 units, and the chemistry at the bottom of that range is the same as the chemistry at the top. Per wash, the spread is roughly 6p to 30p. Over a year of ordinary family laundry that is the difference between about £12 and about £60 for a benefit that independent testing struggles to detect at all.

Do not put a hot wash on a protein stain. This is the single most useful piece of laundry advice in this whole article and it costs nothing. Heat denatures protein and sets blood, egg, milk and sweat into the fibre where no amount of oxygen bleach will shift them afterwards. Cold water, an enzyme product, time, and only then a warm wash. Almost every ruined shirt in Britain was ruined by somebody helpfully putting it straight in at 60.

And treat colour safe as a claim rather than a guarantee. Colours formulas leave out the optical brighteners and usually run a gentler bleach system, but oxygen bleach is still bleach and dye is still dye. The single most common one star complaint we found across every brand in this group was a coloured garment coming out patchy from a product sold as safe for colours. Test on a seam or a hem, every time, whatever the pack says.