Updated: 5th January 2024
Almost half of UK households own at least one pet and dogs are the most popular, followed by cats (source: Statista). Whether its dogs, cats, rabbits or hamsters, pet owners know how difficult it is to keep carpets and floors hair-free and clean with the right vacuum cleaner (or “hoover” as we like to call it!).
If you own a pet and want the best hoover for cleaning pet hair, we’ll help you find the right model (at the right price!) and keep your carpets, floors and car free of pesky hair from dogs, cats and any other furry friends you might be sharing a home with!
Want to skip to the results? (cheeky!) – here is the quick rundown of the best pet hair vacs on the market:
Top pet vacuums in 2024
| Model | Vacuum Type | Price |
|---|---|---|
Dyson V8 Animal Vacuum |
Cordless | View on Amazon |
Shark Lift-Away with Pet Brush |
Upright / Stick | View on Amazon |
Bissell Pet Hair Eraser |
Handheld | View on Amazon |
Harry Bagged Cylinder Vacuum |
Cylinder | View on Amazon |
Skip to the good stuff
Why do you need a pet vacuum?
✓ Vacuum up pet hair
The number one reason pet owners need a vacuum is pet hair. Many breeds of dogs and cats shed hair daily. Even if you keep them well-brushed and groomed, hair will still get all over your carpets and other soft furnishing like sofas and beds.
Some breeds of dog shed more seasonally in the spring and autumn (like collies) while other breeds shed year-round (like poodles). However, when dogs live indoors with us, exposure to our central heating can cause year-round shedding to happen in all breeds (source: PetHelpful).
Outdoor cats tend to shed seasonally and lose less hair in the winter months, but cats living indoors will lose hair all year.
Pet hair is difficult to vacuum, so having a specialised pet hair vacuum will help you pick up dog and cat hair with ease.
✓ Tackle mud and dirt
Dogs are not just hair-dropping machines – they are also highly skilled in trailing mud and dirt throughout your house! When the weather is rainy (and that’s fairly often in Britain!), even our best efforts to wipe their paws will leave some muddy paw prints on your carpets and floors A good pet vacuum will also tackle the mess left by dried-on mud.
✓ Keep allergies at bay
Some people can be allergic to cats or dogs (or both). It’s not pet hair that causes these allergies, but flakes of dead skin, saliva and dried urine (source: NHS,). Yuck. Using a powerful pet vacuum could help to keep your home free from these inevitable pet leftovers.
Pet vacuums vs Normal vacuums: What’s the difference?
Special pet brush attachments
The top pet vacuums will often come with a special pet brush.
Pet brushes can be narrower than the standard vacuum base, making hoovering take a little longer, but they are specially designed to remove pet hair from carpets, upholstery, sofas, rugs and tricky areas like stairs.
Shark Upright NV681 Pet Hair, Powered Lift-Away Vacuum comes with a “Pet Power Brush” that works by using 2 thin stips of felt underneath to attract hair, and stiff, rotating bristles inside the brush that remove stuck-on hair and draw it into the vacuum.
Harry Pet HHR 200-11 Bagged Cylinder Vacuum comes with an imaginatively-named “Hairo Brush”, complete with an independent set of wheels for easy movement, and a stiff, rotating inner brush to pull the hairs up.
Here’s a cross-section of the Hairo Brush so you can see how it works:
Most pet hair brushes use a similar mechanism. They will make a satisfying ‘whirring’ sound when you use them. You may also be able to buy a pet hair brush that fits to your existing vacuum cleaner, for example, the Hairo Brush will also work with the popular Henry vacuum (the red one with a smile!).
Odour filters
Sometimes, pet hairs and debris can be a little whiffy – a pet vacuum can come with a charcoal filter, designed to absorb odours as you hoover up dirt.
The benefits of HEPA filters in vacuum cleaners
HEPA stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air and is a fancy term for a special type of air filter. If a vacuum has a HEPA filter, it means it can trap fine particles like pollen or dust mite feces.
HEPA filters can be graded using a number (e.g. “HEPA 4 filter”). The number refers to the MERV (Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value) rating, a scale from 1 to 20 that measures how well a filter can remove small particles from the air. 2o is the best HEPA rating available.
If you need a very efficient HEPA filter to vacuum allergens out of your home, you’ll need to look for a vacuum with a high HEPA rating, like the Miele Complete C3, which has a rating of HEPA 13.
Most pet hoovers have sufficient filters to trap pet hair and dander, as these particles are not that small. Cat and dog dander is between 3 and 10 μm (micrometres), and will be trapped with a HEPA filter rated 5 or more on the MERV scale (source: Wikipedia).
Different types of pet vacuum
Pet vacuums come in all shapes and sizes; pick one based on your requirements. Do you have carpets, hard floors or both? Do you want a cordless hoover that’s easy to move around? Do you prefer upright or cylinder? Don’t forget bagged and bagless options, too!
Whichever type of vacuum you prefer, we’ll help you find the best one for pet hair.
Is a cordless vacuum best for pet hair?
Cordless vacuum cleaners are popular for several reasons:
✓ Lightweight – easier to carry, lift and maneuver into those hard-to-reach spots
✓ Compact – easy to store out of sight when not in use
✓ Easy to take to the car or vacuum places far from electrical sockets
✓ No getting tangled up in the cord!
Cordless vacuums are easy to grab and quickly deal with a mess or bit of pet hair you spot, without having to go through the hassle of plugging in a heavy, corded hoover.
However, you do need to remember a few drawbacks:
✗ Need to remember to keep it charged between uses
✗ Battery life may worsen over time
✗ Have to empty the ‘bag’ often
Best cordless vacuum for pet hair
Most cordless vacuums are also “stick vacuums”, meaning that they consist of one large ‘stick’, with the motor at the top and roller at the bottom.
Cordless vacuums are also known as “handheld” vacuums, which is a bit confusing because you hold all hoovers with your hands! Almost all cordless vacuums are bagless because they are designed for quick use and have small cylinders for debris storage that will need frequent emptying.
Our pick: Dyson V8 Animal Cordless Vacuum
Dyson is one of the most famous vacuum brands in the world, founded by British designer Sir James Dyson. The brand is known for its patented design features and high quality vacuum technology, which is of course accompanied by some of the highest prices in the industry.
Dyson’s latest cordless vacuum that’s designed specifically to clean pet hair is the V8 model.
So is the pet hair Dyson V8 worth the extra cash?
Here are the good bits:
✓ Up to 40 minutes usage (25 mins with motorised tool attached)
✓ Charging time: 5 hours (can be left charging all the time without affecting battery life)
✓ Wall-mountable storage dock
✓ Washable sealed HEPA filter (traps particles as small as 0.3 microns)
✓ Comes with specialist tools: Direct Drive Cleaner Head, Mini Motorised Tool, Combination Tool, Rigid Crevice Tool
✓ Converts into a handheld vacuum for cleaning car or upholstery
✓ Weighs 2.6 kgs
✓ Noise level up to 73dB (fairly quiet for a vacuum!)
And here are the annoying bits:
✗ Filter needs washing once a month, and takes 24 hours to dry
✗ Low dust capacity
✗ There’s really not much bad to say about it, but it’s just so darn expensive!
Notable contenders:
Shark Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner [IF200UKT] Pet Hair, Single Battery
Hoover Freedom 2in1 Pets Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner [FD22RP]
Best upright hoover for pet hair
An upright vacuum cleaner is your bog-standard big, bulky, long hoover. Uprights also pack quite a punch in terms of suction power, bag capacity and toughness.
Uprights also also known as “stick vacuums”, in case you were wondering.
Our pick: Shark Powered Lift-Away Vacuum with Pet Hair Brush
Shark is a relative newcomer to the vacuum market, founded in Canada in 1998. Since then, the company has had plenty of success and proved very popular in the UK thanks to their reliability and affordability.
The Lift-Away form Shark is a powerful little beast, that’s easy to maneuver and works well on carpet and hard floors.
You can use the Shark Lift-Away as a standard upright vacuum on floors.
But you can also convert it to “Lift-Away” mode.
With the Lift-Away function, it’s easier to use accessories like the pet power brush (it also comes with an upholstery tool and 2-in-1 duster crevice tool that you’ll probably never use). With Lift-Away, you can hold the vacuum like a cylinder and easily clean your stairs or car.
It’s not a perfect hoover by any means, but for the price it cleans carpets, hard floors, upholstery, your car and anything else you want to remove pet hair and dirt from very efficiently.
What we like:
✓ Available with a Pet Power Brush
✓ Has both hard floor and carpet modes
✓ HEPA filter
✓ Converts into a handheld vacuum
✓ Has it’s own headlights!
Things to consider:
✗ Weighs over 6kg
✗ Corded – you’ll have to plug it in
✗ Small cylinder capacity – will need emptying frequently
✗ 80dB noise level – there are quieter vacuums on the market
Top handheld hoover for pet hair
Technically, you hold all vacuums in your hand (except robot ones of course!), but handheld hoovers are usually very small and used to pick up little messes and spills on the fly. You can keep on in your kitchen cupboard or by the door to deal with any pet-related dirt that might find its way into your house.
Handheld hoovers are also cordless by default! Handheld vacuums are notoriously poorly reviewed by consumers. Why? Because they just cannot compete with their larger counterparts. Suction is lower, bag capacity is lower, run time is lower… I could go on. But where they win is on convenience – a trusty sidekick for quick cleanup.
Our pick: Bissell Pet Hair Eraser
Bissell is a privately owner company that specialised in floor cleaning. Amazingly, the company started way back in 1876 when they created the now infamous Bissell Carpet Sweeper (source: Wikipedia).
Skip forward almost 150 years and Bissell are still making some of the best floor cleaning and vacuum products on the market worldwide.
But enough with the history lesson! The Bissell Pet Hair Eraser is a lightweight handheld hoover that’s bagless and comes with a charger and motorised pet hair brush.
It may also entertain your dog for a while…
The best bits:
✓ Cordless (up to 15 minutes usage)
✓ Rechargeable – charging time: 5 hours
✓ Weighs only 1.29kg
✓ 1.5 litre dust capacity
✓ Comes with motorised brush – helps dislodge dirt and hair
✓ Very quiet – only 68dB
What the sales page won’t tell you:
✗ No HEPA filter (just a standard filter instead)
✗ Filter needs cleaning after each use to keep the suction strong
Bagless vs Bagged Vacuums: Which will help more with pet hair?
Hoover bags sort of fell out of style a while ago when the market was flooded with shiny new bagless vacuums. Back before we could easily buy things online, it used to be difficult (or expensive) to find the right bag for your hoover model.
The thing is: bagless is not necessarily better. In fact, bagged vacuum cleaners can offer greater suction and efficiency because bags keep dirt and hair away from the machine’s filters. Emptying a bagless hoover can also be a messy job and not great for anyone with allergies.
Best bagged pet vacuum
Our pick: Harry Bagged Cylinder Vacuum
While one famous Harry might already be taken… there’s nothing stopping any of us getting our very own Harry hoover. He might be heavy and bagged, but Harry is a green, pet hair cleaning machine!
The Harry, Henry and Hetty line of vacuum cleaners are made by a company called Numatic, founded in the UK in 1969. Their vacuums are still British-made; manufacturing takes place in Chard, Somerset.
Harry is Henry’s little brother (or son, maybe?). Whatever the relation, Henry is built to clean pet hair – the “Hairo” brush I mentioned earlier is designed to get cat and dog hair out of carpets, sofas, cars etc.
Secret tip: If you already have a Henry or Hetty vacuum, you can just buy the Hairo brush on its own and convert them into specialist pet vacuums. Nice.
Sure, you’ll need to stock up on spare Harry vacuum bags once in a while, but unbranded ones are fairly cheap and you’ll never need to stand over the dustbin bashing a bagless cylinder and inhaling clouds of dust again.
What we love:
✓ Charcoal filter – no pet smells!
✓ No mess when emptying
✓ Massive 9 litre dust capacity
✓ HEPA filter
✓ Comes with the Hairo brush – helps dislodge dirt and hair
✓ Quiet for a large vacuum – only 72dB
The bad bits:
✗ Weighs 8.5kg – you’ll struggle to use it on the stairs
✗ Corded
✗ You’ll have to buy new bags
Best bagless pet vacuums
If bagless vacuums are your preference, we’ve already covered plenty of them in this guide: