You might need a business suit on a daily basis, in which case a quick warm-up time and powerful wattage output will be your priority. You might have small children around, in which case safety will be very much higher on your agenda. Selecting the best steam iron for you will depend on how often you use it, how many clothes you have, how fussy you are with things like drapery and upholstery (yes, they can be ironed, too!), and how safety conscious you are. You can now expect all irons to comfortably smooth out unwanted wrinkles, to have an auto shut-off function, to be able to iron vertically as well as horizontally, and in some cases have a digital display! The technology has come on so well in recent years, that many things which used to be niche and cutting-edge now come as standard. Choosing a steam iron is more difficult than ever but in a good sense. One way to avoid mineralization is to use distilled water (or, according to laundry expert and host of the Laundry Guy Patric Richardson, spring water, which allows water to heat up beyond the boiling point), but most irons will have a self-cleaning function to avoid gritty buildup.In case you let your clean laundry spend a lot of time in your laundry bag, then you are in a grave necessity of a steam iron. Mineralization management: Another one of Pozniak’s necessary iron functions is “a self-cleaning function for all those minerals in our water, unless you are a true ironing fanatic and use distilled water.” A steam iron you’re filling from the sink will inevitably see a buildup of the minerals found in tap water, which can clog holes and “eject this gross white grainy sand, and if you iron it into your clothes, now it’s stained,” says Pozniak. Too-high heat is more of a problem than too-low heat, so “always do less heat than you think at first and then work your way up,” says Freer. Temperature control: Another necessary function is a well-calibrated thermostat that consistently delivers the heat you specify “so you’re not scorching or putting burn marks on your clothes,” per Pozniak. All of the irons on this list have a steam function, and we’re noting which have notably fine, responsive steam.
“The only reason to buy a good iron is for the steam function, honestly,” says costume designer and Strategist contributor Alison Freer. One of those is producing steam, which relaxes textile fibers and smoothes wrinkles.
Steam: “Fortunately at this point in our civilization, most people who create irons understand that they really need to have a couple functions,” says Zach Pozniak, a third-generation dry cleaner and the vice-president of operations at Jeeves New York.
We spoke to eight experts, including historical costumers and dry cleaners, about their favorites.īest overall | Best less expensive | Best upgrade | Best for safety features | Best titanium-ceramic | Best cordless | Best with water tank | Best splurge Unlike garment steamers, which perform many of the same wrinkle-lifting functions, irons apply direct heat to a textile, which lifts deep-set wrinkles more easily and creates sharp creases or a uniformly crisp surface. A good iron can make the difference between a dread-inducing, monotonous task and entering a flow state while you sweep a well-calibrated machine over your clothing or sheets.