What’s the best type of laundry detergent? Pods, liquid or powder?

Ever wonder what ‘type’ or ‘form’ of laundry detergent is most effective when it comes to stain removal? Well we tested it and found that pods were best, followed very closely by liquid detergent, and then finally, powder.

Pods were able to remove 84% of stains, liquid was at 82% and powder was at 74%. We believe that pods came out on top because of the compartments; each cleaning ingredient can be more concentrated if packaged separately prior to use.

Hope is not lost if you are a detergent powder die hard! Tide Powder w/ Oxi beat out all of the ‘original’ recipe detergents. Sometimes you just need a little boost.

For this test we used mascara, lipstick, foundation, mustard, ketchup, chocolate sauce, grass, ink, and blackberry as our stains. We used base level Tide for each of the detergents to ensure it was as fair a test as possible. Each swatch was cleaned on the same cycle in the same water temperature with the same load of laundry.