A clean house is a happier house. But keeping a homes clean isn’t easy—the average person spends about five hours cleaning their home each week, and chances are good that doesn’t cover all of it. (There’s a reason they call them “chores.”) One reason keeping the house tidy can take so much time and effort is due to the materials and design choices in your home. Some materials are just easier to keep clean, and some design choices that look cool can add minutes or hours to your cleaning schedule.
If you’re planning a remodel or renovation of your home, you have an opportunity to not only address the style and utility of the space, but also its how easy it is to keep clean. Making smart design decisions and selecting the easy-to-clean materials can save you time and effort.
Don’t make design choices that will increase your cleaning burden
Sometimes the way your stuff is shaped or placed has a big impact on how hard it is to clean. If you’re replacing furniture, fixtures, or more, here are a few things that will make your refreshed house much easier to clean and maintain:
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Wall-faced and skirted toilets are easier to access and less fussy to scrub clean. One reason cleaning the bathroom is such a pain is the fact that toilets often resemble a piece of complex sculpture, crammed up against a wall with lots of nooks and crannies to collect dirt and grime. A wall-faced, skirted toilet like this one eliminates both of those elements, making it much easier to keep your toilet clean. Or go one step further and streamline your bathroom with a wall-hung toilet with an in-wall cistern.
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Freestanding tubs give mold one less place to thrive. A tub that sits on the floor instead of embedded within a surround or caulked directly to the walls like this one allows you to clean under and around it a lot more easily, and the lack of caulk around the edges gives mold and dirt one less spot to collect on.
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Frameless shower walls cut down on corners that will collect grime. If you’re planning on a step-in shower or a shower-tub combination with glass doors or walls, frameless options offer fewer edges that can become caked in hard water scale and dirt.
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Large tiles are easier to clean than smaller ones. If you’re going to put tile on your walls and floors, large-format tile isn’t just a dramatic design choice, it also means less grout, and grout lines are essentially tiny valleys of horror where dirt accumulates. The fewer of them, the better.
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Floating cabinets and vanities are easier to clean around. As with your toilet, any place where a piece of furniture sits directly on top of the floor will be a magnet for grime. Cabinets that float over the floor make it easy to run a mop or vacuum underneath. And while it’s true that cabinetry that goes all the way to the ceiling has its drawbacks, if your goal is less cleaning, they can eliminate the dusty desert ecosystem that develops on top of your cabinets.
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Elevated furniture is easier to clean under. Similarly, avoid choosing furniture that sits low or directly on the floor. If you can’t fit a vacuum under the couch, it will soon be the dirtiest place in your home—but you won’t notice until the next time you move or refresh your furnishings. Choose furniture with legs that leave the space below accessible.
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Flat doors wipe clean easier than paneled ones. If your kitchen and bathroom cabinetry has paneled doors, you will notice that dirt and grease collects in the seams, and this can be a tedious challenge to clean. Picking flat-faced cabinetry means cleaning your doors will be a simple matter of running a dust cloth over them—especially if you forego pulls or handles altogether.
These materials can cut down on your cleaning time
The design choices you make are one aspect of an easy-to-clean home. Another comes in the materials you choose:
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Microfiber upholstery repels stains. Our furniture collects dust, pet hair, and spills. Your best choices for your furniture upholstery are microfiber, which can be cleaned with a quick vacuum and the occasional soap-and-water scrub, or vinyl, which can mimic other materials (like leather) while being super easy to clean.
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Seamless flooring will mop much more quickly. While hardwood floors and ceramic tile are durable and relatively easy to clean, both have one drawback: Seams. The spaces between wood planks and the grout lines between tiles will always be challenging to keep clean. That makes seamless choices like vinyl or sealed concrete the absolute best in terms of keeping things clean.
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Opt for carpet tiles over carpet. If you want carpeting in your home, any stain can turn into an emergency situation. One way to make carpet easier to clean and maintain is to choose carpet tiles instead. If you spill something, or if a pet soils a spot on your carpet you can just pluck out the tile and wash it or replace it without too much trouble. (Granted, it might not be as plush or attractive as you’d like—but if you’ve ever had to pull up roomfuls of stained carpet and padding, you might not mind.)
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Choose non-porous counters. Unlike natural stones like granite, quartz is a non-porous material, which means it doesn’t stain as easily and doesn’t require a lot of upkeep—you can usually just wipe a quartz countertop down with a damp rag. Solid surface materials like Corian are also easy to clean, but they’re also easier to nick, and aren’t as heat-resistant.
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Stainless steel appliances…aren’t. While stainless steel is a great choice for kitchen and laundry appliances, it’s not perfect in terms of cleaning—despite its name, stainless steel can rust and discolor, and will show every single fingerprint and water spot. If you’re replacing your appliances as part of a remodel or simple upgrade, your best bet is fingerprint-resistant stainless steel. This material includes a clear coat on top of the metal to protect it from smudges and other dirt, making it significantly easier to keep clean. Also consider a sealed burner for your cooktop, which will prevent crumbs, grease, and food particles from getting trapped under the cooktop.
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Choose a wall covering you can scrub. As with floors, the easiest wall covering materials to clean will be seamless. Ceramic tile is durable, but those grout lines will get you every time. Paint can be one of the easiest surfaces to clean if you choose a gloss, semi-gloss, or satin finish (if gloss is too shiny for the space), especially if you choose a paint formulated to be easy to clean. Stay away from flat finishes if you are at all prone to messiness/if you have kids.
Another rarely considered option is back-painted glass (especially for backsplashes in kitchens, though it can be a great choice for bathroom walls). While this can be a pricier option, the seamless nature of this material makes it simple to clean.
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Consider window treatments you can toss in the washer. Once you install window treatments you probably stop thinking about them—until the day you notice they’ve grown a thick pelt of dust. While you’ll probably wind up having to dust any window treatments regularly, blinds can be particularly maddening and time-consuming to clean. Curtains or fabric shades can be removed and tossed into the washing machine, at least.
