The 9 Best Pet Hair Removers

Most of the pet hair removal tools we tested involved scraping up or brushing pet hair off a surface. The DELOMO stands out as the best because it actually gathers pet hair into an inner compartment that is easily dumped out into the trash. This simple yet effective tool is like a large lint brush attached to a roller. The brush is approximately seven inches long, so you can cover a large area quickly.

As you roll the brush back and forth over the carpet, upholstery, car seat, or whatever you want to clean, two thin paddles attached to the lint brush scrape pet hair into a compartment. To empty, simply push a button near the top of the handle, and it pops open, allowing you pull out what’s been gathered. We tried the DELOMO on all types of material surfaces, and it was by far, the best and most versatile of the other products we tested.

The Lilly Brush Pro Pet Hair Tool Kit comes with a large detailer for upholstery and a smaller, narrower detailer for getting pet hair that’s lodged under and between car seats. The large detail measures 9-inches long, so it can easily cover a large area. It’s made of hard plastic with a flexible silicone scraper and is curved to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. There’s also a strap on the back of the detailer for your fingers so it won’t slip while you’re using it.

The Lilly Brush detailer works well on scraping up surface hair from most surfaces. By scraping the detailer against fabric, it gathers up hair into a sizable clump for easy disposal. We found the Lilly Brush to be very effective on upholstery and low- to medium-pile rugs and carpets. The mini 14-inch detailer works for very narrow spaces, but for really cleaning pet hair from your car, a pet hair vacuum will do a better job.

Cat lovers agree that the Gonzo Pet Hair Lifter is the best removal tool for feline fur. Basically, it’s a large latex sponge, measuring 5.5×3.5 inches, and you use it dry to wipe hair up. We were pretty skeptical that a sponge could work and were pleasantly surprised to see it gather fine pet hairs with a single swipe. You can’t really use the sponge on a carpet or area rug, but it’s very effective on upholstery, blankets, pet beds, car seats, and any type of fabric.

The Gonzo sponge can also clean and dust baseboards, blinds, vents, and drapes. Once you’ve gathered up and disposed of pet hair, the sponge can be rinsed, but it does need to be thoroughly dry before its next use. Reasonably priced, the Gonzo Pet Hair Lifter comes two to a package, and depending on your use, these durable sponges should last a good while.

The Vitazoo Pet Hair Removal Brush is basically a scrub brush with soft rubber bristles. It works similarly to the Lilly Brush Detailer in that you use it to scrape pet hair towards you for removal manually or by vacuum. The Vitazoo was quite effective on all fabric surfaces, but it does take a bit of elbow grease to cover a large area. But that said, the brush is great for small area rugs and really does bring up imbedded hair.

The Vitazoo brush appears to be well made, is sturdily constructed, and can be easily cleaned by rinsing it under running water. This very reasonably priced product won’t pick up every pet hair in your home, but it will certainly help you keep fluffy’s fur under control.

The Analan Mini Pet Hair Detailer is a handy little tool for removing fine pet hairs from small spaces. Pleasingly shaped like a rounded triangle, the detailer has a hollow center ring for inserting a couple of fingers while using it. We could barely squeeze two fingers through the ring, however, so clearly the Analan detailer was designed for smaller hands.

It’s made of hard rubber, and each side of the triangle has grooves, marked small, medium, and large. The small grooves are intended for fine hair, but we found it to be pretty useless and stuck with using the large grooves with which we had more success in lifting up pet hair. The Analan is not great for area rugs, so it’s best to just use it for removing hair from blankets and upholstery. Although the company claims the detailer is approved by car detailers, it did nothing in picking up hair from our car seats.

At one time, the sticky roller was the only type of pet-hair remover, and Scotch-Brite is a familiar brand to pet owners. This model is extra wide, measuring eight inches, and marketed as being “extra sticky” and not just for pet hair. You can use it for picking up pretty much any type of small debris, such as crumbs, leaves, sand, and even, coins.(Pretty silly marketing — why not just pick the penny up?) It’s relatively lightweight with a curved handle that fits nicely in the hand.

The extra sticky sheets are exactly that, but perhaps too sticky, because as we rolled the roller over material, the sticky sheet stuck to the material and bunched up on the roller. This happened several times, and since you only get 60 sheets per roll, that’s a lot of waste. We tested the Scotch-Brite on a pet-hair-covered blanket and went through four sticky sheets, yet some hair remained behind. The Scotch-Brite roller is cheap, but you’ll need to purchase several sticky rolls at a substantial cost.

The Leo Cleaning Roller is another sticky-sheet roller but with an attachable three-foot extension pole. The sticky roll is a huge 10-inches in length, and the roller itself is surprisingly heavy for this type of tool, weighing almost double of the Scotch-Brite roller. The sticky roll has only 25 sheets, and once used, the sheets have no indication where to peel them off, so it’s easy to rip off two sheets instead of one.

The Leo roller is easy to roll, but the sticky sheets lose their adhesive after three or four passes. The extension pole is a great idea, but it really only works on uncarpeted floors. Using it on a carpet or rug is frustrating because you’ll go through so many sticky sheets just to clean one small area. Replacement rolls are quite expensive, so in the end, the Leo Cleaning Roller isn’t budget-friendly.

Back in the day when shag rugs were the rage, a carpet rake was a must-have.  Although the FURemover Carpet Rake is marketed as a tool for removing hair from carpets, it doesn’t actually work on rugs. The rake part is made of soft rubber bristles that don’t have enough stiffness to pull hair out of carpet. However, it’s actually pretty good in sweeping up hair and other debris from a hardwood floor, tile floor, or linoleum.

The bristles trap hair and allow you to sweep it into a small area for vacuuming or manual pickup. The FURemover has a telescopic-handle feature that expands the handle from three feet to five feet, which proved to be handy when working on a large area and for reaching up to gather hair on drapes.

The Lilly Brush Mini Detailer is a Lilliputian-sized version of the Lilly Brush Pro. It’s made of the same material — hard plastic encased with a silicone blade — and works the same way by scraping hair off a fabric surface. Measuring only 3×4 inches, the mini detailer is great to pop into your purse or pocket for small, quick cleanups of pet hair or lint.

The larger version is much better for covering bigger areas, so the mini could be used for dog or cat beds, throw pillows, and seat cushions. Design-wise, because it’s so small, we found it gave no protection to fingers when scraping up hair from upholstery.