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Don’t forget to clean under the rim! Cotton Mop Head Refill
Toilet brushes are the oft-forgotten, but oh-so-important members of our home-cleaning dream team. A good toilet brush and disinfecting toilet bowl cleaner will help keep harmful bacteria and germs at bay in your bathroom.
While you could just pick up any old toilet brush, keep in mind that the best ones will have proper parts for reaching under the rim, a sturdy holder that won’t tip over easily and a handle long enough to keep your hands as far away from the toilet bowl as possible during use.
The Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab is always testing the best cleaning appliances and tools to keep your bathroom sparkling, including bathroom cleaners, tile grout cleaners and shower cleaners. These are our recommendations for the best toilet brushes:
To put together our list of best toilet brushes, our cleaning experts tested 14 toilet brushes by applying a sunflower butter mixture to a ceramic toilet bowl, then tracking the number of swipes it took for each brush to completely clean inside the toilet bowl and under its rim. We also noted how easy each toilet brush was to use, clean and store. Each toilet brush's holder was evaluated for ease of cleaning and assessed for its risk of tipping over. In addition, our team browsed the most popular retailers in search of the most well-reviewed and highly-rated toilet brushes.
You can read more about how we test toilet brushes and find answers to some frequently asked toilet brush questions below. For more bathroom content, check out our in-depth guide to cleaning your toilet and guide to the best tile grout cleaners.
Traditional toilet brushes can have a hard time reaching under the rim of a toilet bowl because of their stiff, round shape.
This toilet brush from OXO has the look and feel of a traditional toilet brush with the handy addition of angled bristles to reach where others can’t. In our test, all it took was five swipes around the toilet bowl for this toilet brush to completely rid the bowl of messes. We found the handle easy to hold and liked that didn't have to turn our hands at uncomfortable angles to clean every side of the toilet bowl.
The brush holder keeps the brush out of sight when not in use; it opens when you pull up on the brush and stays open while the brush is in use so you don’t have to reach down and manually reopen it. A ventilated drip tray keeps your brush from sitting in a puddle of water, allowing the brush to air dry to deter odors and bacteria. Take note that the holder has more parts to clean than others.
At a fraction of the price of most of our other picks, this quick-drying silicone toilet brush from Sellemer cleaned our test toilet in just seven swipes around the bowl. Our expert had a hard time with other silicone toilet brushes with this untraditional shape, but this one was flexible enough to cover all sides of the bowl without too much wrist acrobatics. It did require a slight bit more elbow grease than some other brushes.
The Sellemer brush comes in a slim, easy-to-store holder that can be mounted on the wall to free up floor space and has ventilation holes to allow the brush to dry quickly. A drip tray in the holder keeps your floor dry and keeps the brush out of contact with any water that drains away.
No extra cleaning products are needed when using this ToiletWand from Clorox. The scrubbing head has a built-in disinfecting cleaner that begins dispensing as soon as the brush comes into contact with the toilet water, and it contains the perfect amount of cleaner for a single use.
In our tests, this disposable toilet cleaner required the least amount of swipes of all the brushes we tested, leaving our test toilet spotless after just three swipes. This toilet bowl brush is hygienic not just because you’re getting rid of the piece that touches the germy toilet bowl after every use, but also because of its hands-free method of attaching and detaching the cleaning sponges. The used head detaches with the press of one button, and then you simply click the handle into a fresh head, meaning you never have to touch the end that goes into your toilet. The manufacturer advises that you let the built-in cleaner sit for five minutes to sanitize the bowl or 10 minutes to disinfect.
The holder is big enough to hold about 10 pad refills at a time while taking up the same amount of space as a traditional toilet brush. Be sure to dispose of cleaning heads in the trash, not down the toilet.
By far the easiest to use and best performing silicone toilet brush we tested, the Looeez tackled our sunflower butter mixture easily, requiring only four swipes around the bowl to completely remove all traces of the mess.
Wide spaces in between each of its blades meant no debris became stuck in this brush, and it covered a large area of the bowl with each swipe. Perfectly angled top blades reach under the rim easily and water just rolls right off of the brush head with no shaking required when you’re done. The brush head is flexible enough to make contact with all sides of the bowl without much effort, though the angular shape of the handle was a bit uncomfortable to hold.
The brush holder is surprisingly sturdy, requiring a deliberate push to tip it over. It's easy to clean and small enough to fit neatly in a corner of your bathroom.
This all-in-one toilet brush and holder lets little to no water drip on the floor when you take the brush from the bowl to the caddy. With the click of one button and a slide down the handle (don’t worry, you won’t get too close to the brush head), the holder is flipped into place and the brush is ready to store.
During testing, our expert found that the toilet brush holder retracted high enough on the handle to keep it out of the way, and the brush cleaned our test debris in just six swipes around the bowl. After cleaning, the brush remains elevated above the holder so the bristles don’t sit in a puddle of water. Thanks to a completely exposed side, the brush dries quickly, and we found that no debris remained stuck in between bristles when we finished cleaning. Take note that moving the holder up and down the handle requires two hands.
Let's be frank: Nobody really wants to look at their toilet cleaning brush, but this bamboo and powder-coated steel option makes it a little less painful to stare at the utilitarian item day in and day out. The brush handle is super slim and sleek and nestles right into the sturdy holder with the upcycled coconut husk scrubbing pads.
The pads are infused with lemon and tea tree oil and release a citric acid-based natural cleaning agent that foams when activated against your toilet, leaving behind a light and fresh scent. It's easy to operate: Simply press a button on the top to allow built-in grippers to grab the coconut husk. When you're done, press the button again to release the dirty pad into the trash.
This space-saving combo from Libman stores both your toilet brush and your plunger in a well-ventilated holder that allows for easy drying of both bathroom tools. With just five swipes, the Libman toilet brush cleaned most of the sunflower butter from our test toilet bowl. Reaching under the rim was a little more difficult because of its lack of under-the-rim extending bristles.
Even with a slightly shorter handle than the other toilet brushes our expert tested, this brush was easy to use and required no extra bending forward to reach into the furthest parts of the toilet bowl. There were also very few nooks and crannies in the holder for germs to hide in.
To find the best toilet brushes to clean your toilet bowl, our Cleaning Lab experts researched the most popular toilet brushes available to consumers — everything from traditional bristle brushes to silicone and biodegradable brushes made from coconut husks.
We chose 14 toilet brushes that best represented what is on the market and put them all through the same performance and ease-of-use tests.
After spreading a sunflower butter paste onto the inside of a toilet bowl and allowing it to air dry for 20 minutes, each brush was used to clean the bowl with no additional toilet bowl cleaner (except for the Clorox ToiletWand, which has cleaner built into the scrubbing head).
After just over 130 total swipes around the bowl, our experts made note of the number of swipes that were made with each brush to remove the paste, along with the effort that was required to reach all sides of the toilet bowl. We noted how well each brush cleaned under the rim and how easily the brush and holder were to clean and store. To test the sturdiness of the toilet brush holders, our expert pushed and pulled on the holders to determine how easy each was to tip over.
Shopping for a toilet brush seems pretty simple, but here are a few things to keep in mind to find the best one for your home.
✔️ Bristles vs. silicone: There are two kinds of brush heads that make up the majority of the toilet brushes on the market: plastic bristles and silicone. While both kinds of toilet brushes will get your toilet bowl clean, most silicone brushes require a little more effort and wrist maneuvering than those with plastic bristles. Traditional plastic bristle toilet brushes are easy to use, clean well and are more readily available at local stores. On the other hand, silicone brushes trap less water in the brush head and can be more durable than traditional plastic bristle brushes.
✔️ Brush head shape: Germs can get trapped and be forgotten under the rim of the toilet. Look for brushes with a rim cleaner or ones that have a shape that can easily be maneuvered to reach under the rim. Round, bristle and silicone brush heads were the easiest to maneuver in our tests. Cleaning with flat silicone brushes took a little more effort than we would like.
✔️ Brush holder: The holder for your toilet brush is as important as the toilet brush itself. The holder should provide proper ventilation for quick drying and odor control. Also, consider how much space you have on your bathroom floor for the holder. You may prefer a wall-mounted option.
✔️ Price: Toilet brushes cost anywhere from under $5 at your local grocery store to well over $100. How much you are comfortable spending on this bathroom cleaning tool is up to you, and it is important to note that the price of the brush is not necessarily indicative of how well it will clean your toilet bowl. If you choose a reusable toilet brush, you should plan to purchase replacement brush heads about twice a year. Disposable toilet brushes will also add an extra expense when you need to buy refills.
You sure do. Toilet brushes can sit in a puddle of water inside the brush holder for days in between use. If you aren’t careful, this can lead to mold and other bacteria growing on the brush.
Every couple of uses, thoroughly spray your toilet brush and toilet brush holder with a disinfectant spray (and try to get into all the nooks and crannies germs may be hiding in). Allow them both to air dry before storing them again. If you notice debris trapped in between the bristles or silicone nubs of your toilet brush, toss it and use another. You don’t want to keep a toilet brush that requires scrubbing or touching the brush head to get clean.
Most manufacturers recommend replacing your toilet brush every six months or whenever your brush becomes discolored, begins to lose bristles or has an odor that can not be washed away. Some toilet brushes, like our best overall toilet brush from OXO, offer replacement heads that can be purchased instead of buying a whole new toilet brush, minimizing both cost and the amount of plastic waste you produce. If you are using a disposable toilet brush, you should replace the toilet brush head after every single use.
From our testing, we found that silicone toilet brushes do not clean better or worse than traditional bristle brushes. All but two of the bristle brushes we tested required five to six swipes to remove the sunflower butter paste from our test toilet. Half of the silicone brushes we tested required the same amount of swipes as the best bristle brushes tested and the other half required more than seven.
Jodhaira Rodriguez has been testing and writing about cleaning appliances and products for the Good Housekeeping since 2021. For this story, she spent several hours searching for the best toilet brushes available from online retailers and tested the best-sellers.
Brigitt Earley is a writer, editor and content creator with over 15 years of experience in the home, cleaning and health spaces and more. She worked under the guidance of our Lab pros to research and write about the toilet brushes in this story.
Brigitt is a writer, editor and craft stylist with nearly 15 years of experience. She specializes in lifestyle topics, including home, health, parenting, beauty, style, food, entertaining, travel and weddings. She has written for Glamour, People, Good Housekeeping, Women's Health, Real Simple, Martha Stewart, Apartment Therapy, The Spruce, and more.
From 2021 to 2023, Jodhaira (she/her) was a product reviews analyst in the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Home Care & Cleaning Lab, where she tested and wrote about home appliances, cleaning products and cleaning tips. Prior to joining GH, she graduated from Hofstra University with a bachelor’s degree in forensic science and spent two years as an analyst in an environmental lab in Queens.
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