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Steam through the laundry pile with our expert’s top picks for smoothing creases on cotton, linen, silk and more
Zoë Phillimore Fri 2 Oct 2026 21.00 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google I grew up in a household where everything was ironed. And I mean every thing: tea towels, pyjamas, bath mats. Perhaps as a result of watching my mother (and yes, it was always my mother) spend hours every week standing at an ironing board, I revolted. My heart sinks every time I have to go into battle with an iron. But how do we banish irons while still getting linen trousers to look crisp? I present the clothes steamer.
Clothes steamers use heat and moisture rather than pressure to smooth fabric. A small onboard tank heats water into a steady flow of steam, which you run over garments while they hang. Instead of pressing fibres flat like an iron , the steam causes them to swell and relax, releasing creases without the need for an ironing board.
Because the fabric isn’t pressed directly against the hot surface of an iron, steamers can be gentler on delicate materials such as silk, chiffon and wool. They’re also useful for refreshing garments between washes: a blast of steam can help reduce odours and restore the shape of fabrics that have been crushed in wardrobes or suitcases.
I was already a fan of them on a personal level, and now I’ve taken that enthusiasm professionally by spending the past six months testing to find the best clothes steamers for the Filter. Here’s what I found.
Best clothes steamer overall Russell Hobbs Genie VacuSteam
Best budget clothes steamer Philips 1000 Series handheld steamer
Best clothes steamer for travel Lakeland Foldable steamer
Fastest clothes steamer Steamery Cirrus 3 iron steamer
Best steamer for precision Philips 5000 Series handheld steamer STH5020/40
Why you should trust me I’ve been a journalist for more than 20 years and have spent the past five specialising in hands-on product testing. In that time, I’ve reviewed everything from mattresses and trampolines to coffee machines and dining tables, testing each in real homes rather than controlled showrooms.
That experience has made me sceptical of marketing jargon and overblown claims. I test products as consumers actually use them and I measure what matters. For this feature, that meant timing heat-up speeds, tracking energy consumption, measuring soleplate temperatures and assessing durability alongside day-to-day usability.
I also use clothes steamers fairly regularly at home, so I’m interested not just in performance, but also in whether they genuinely save time and effort.
View image in fullscreen Heat check: measuring the surface temperature of a clothes steamer during testing. Photograph: Zoë Phillimore/The Guardian I tested 24 clothes steamers in my home, on my own clothes and bed linen. My three children have a steady stream of school shirts and trousers that need to be pressed every week, so this took care of testing how the clothes steamers performed on cotton – and whatever they’re making school-uniform trousers out of these days.
I also tested the clothes steamers on more delicate fabrics. Crumpled linen trousers, silk dresses and formal suits were all unearthed from the depths of my wardrobe to be de-creased. During testing, I looked at how easily creases were released while using the steamer a…