Ultimate Buyers Guide to the Best Marble Cleaner

After reading through over 100 websites in a search for the best marble cleaner for your everyday use, we could not seem to find a satisfactory guide to the best marble cleaner. Therefore, after many hours of research and testing we have developed the most comprehensive review of marble cleaners on the web.

After over 21 hours of research on the initial 17 selected marble cleaners we down selected 6 specific products to acquire and test. During 9 hours of testing we determined that the best marble cleaner for your everyday use is MarbleLife’s Marble and Travertine Cleaner. This product is made by largest marble restoration company in North America, and has created what we feel like is the best marble cleaner on the market.

Runner Up

MB Stone Care’s MB-5 Marble Spray Cleaner. This is an excellent cleaner made by a company that has a rich and reputable history in the marble industry,  that will do a great job on all your marble surfaces.

Our Pick For Best Marble Cleaner

You can’t beat MarbleLife’s Marble and Travertine Cleaner, and its backed by the largest marble restoration and care company in North America.

*At the time of writing this.

More…

Quick NavigationWhy you should take our WordHow we Selected Marble CleanersThe 6 Tested ProductsMB Stone Care’s Spray CleanerGranite Gold’s Daily CleanerMarbleLife Marble CleanerZep Clean Stone Plus409 Stone and SteelBlack Diamond Marble and Tile Concentrated CleanerHow we JudgedRemove Oils and GreasesSafety of UseStreak-FreeHow we tested Does it Remove Oils and Greases?Is it Safe to use?Is it Streak-Free?Results

Why you should take our Word

We spent over 21 hours digging through over 100 websites to find reviews on marble cleaners. We also dived into reviews on products on Amazon and on Industry specific sites like CountertopSpecialty, Marble Life, Granite Gold, Reddit, and other natural stone forums. We then researched each company’s background to determine there depth of experience with marble restoration and care.

After these hours of research we selected 6 products, and conducted testing to determine which product preformed best. ​

This buying guide strives to answer the question of which marble cleaner is best for everyday use on all forms of marble. We feel this guide is the best and most detailed review of marble cleaners on the web, and we hope that after you read this you feel the same!

“After reading through over 100 websites in a search for the best marble cleaner for your everyday use, we could not seem to find a satisfactory guide to the best marble cleaner.”

How we Selected Marble Cleaners

To find the best marble cleaner, we started with the top listings on Amazon to get and idea of what people were buying. Then we searched the web for reviews on marble cleaners to see what others were talking about. We then searched hundreds of websites where we found products within industry specific sites which we also added to our list. Finally we came up with an initial list of 17 products. They are listed below:

Marble Cleaner	Company	Company Industry
Howard GM5012 Natural Granite and Marble Cleaner	Howard Products	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products. History in Wooden Cleaners
Granite Gold Daily Cleaner	Granite Gold	Stone Company, Been Making Cleaner Products since 2003
Supreme Surface Daily Stone Cleaner	Supreme Surface	Stone Care and Installation Company
Black Diamond MTC Marble and Tile Cleaner	Black Diamond	Stone Care Product Manufacturer since 1996
Method Daily Granite and Marble Cleaner	Method	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products. Concentration on Green Products
409 Stone and Steel	409	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products.
Dupont StoneTech Revitalizer Cleaner	Dupont	Multi-Industry Conglomerate. Produces stone care product line
Zep Commercial Marble Cleaner	Zep	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products.
Wieman Granite Cleaner and Polish	Wieman	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products. History in Wooden Cleaners
MB-5 Marble Spray Cleaner	MB Stone Care	Stone Care and Installation Company since 1989
Lustro Itailiano Cleaner	Lustro Itailiano	Stone Care Product Manufacturer
SCI Clean Encounters Countertop cleaner	Stone Care International	Stone Care Product Manufacturer since 1994
Simple Green Stone Cleaner	Simple Green	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products. Concentration on Green Products
Seventh Generation Granite and Stone Cleaner	Seventh Generation	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products.
MarbleLife Travertine and Marble Cleaner	MarbleLife	One of the Worlds largest Stone Care and Installation Companies
Zep Stone Clean Stone Plus	Zep	Producer of Multifunctional Cleaning Products.
Supreme Surfaces All in One Stone Care	Supreme Surfaces	Stone Care and Installation Company

After identifying these products we began reading hundreds of reviews on amazon and on marble industry specific sites. We looked for trends on which products are selling on amazon, which have positive reviews, and which products third party marble ecommerce sites are recommending or selling. We also read about each specific company, what products they make, the companies backgrounds and history, and their specializations.

Our Tested Marble Cleaners

Our goal was to find a product that will work without fail and be completely safe on all different types of marble. Since marble stones can be so different in makeup, color, and porosity we think companies with extensive personal experience with marble care are more likely to produce a product that meet these requirements.

We used this research to narrow our options from 17 products to 6 marble cleaners that we acquired to test. We chose these 6 products based upon consumer reviews, recommendations for other third party vendors, and the companies history and specialization in the marble business.

The 6 Tested Products

MB Stone Care’s Spray Cleaner

This product is manufactured by MB Stone Care who has been in the marble business since 1989. The company has a impressive history in the marble business with marble installation and restoration. Their founder was famous for “Education Before Sale” to ensure his customers knew how to treat and care for marble prior to buying any of his products or services. The company now also manufacturers over 30 Marble care specific products.

This product was chosen to be acquired and tested because of the companies history and reputation in the marble care business. This product also is recommended by several third party websites from the US, Europe, and Australia.

Granite Gold’s Daily Cleaner

This product is manufactured by Granite Gold who has 50 years of experience in the stone installation and restoration business. Since 2003, they have been manufacturing stone care products for do it yourself stone care.

This product was chosen to be tested because of its popularity and positive reviews on Amazon.

Marble and Travertine Cleaner

The MarbleLife Marble Cleaner is made by MarbleLife one of the largest marble restoration services in the world, and is currently the largest provider of marble floor polishing services in the world.

This product was chosen to be tested because of the companies extensive experience in the marble care industry, and the creation of this product to provide marble restoration services all of the world.

Zep Clean Stone Plus

Zep Clean Stone Plus is manufactured by Zep a multifunctional cleaner company that has been producing commercial cleaning products in many industries since 1937.

We chose this marble cleaner because Zep does not have a specific specialization in the marble care industry so we wanted to see if that would effect the performance of the product. We also chose this product because it is a multifunctional product that claims to clean and protect. We wanted to see the performance of this type of product versus a traditional product that is just designed to clean.

409 Stone and Steel

This product is made by 409 a famous multifunctional cleaner company.

We chose this product because 409 makes such a popular multi-surface general cleaner, and we wanted to test another product from a non-marble specific industry company. This cleaner also cost less than most other options.

Marble and Tile Concentrated Cleaner

This marble cleaner is made by Black Diamond, who has been making marble care products since 1997. Black Diamond has developed a solid reputation in the marble care industry for developing quality marble care products, and now produces over 30 marble care products.

We chose this product because Black Diamond has a good reputation in the marble care industry and this product is popular on amazon. We also wanted to test a concentrated cleaner to determine its performance compared to typical marble cleaners. Also, since this product is concentrated it is a more affordable solution relative to the traditional marble cleaners.

​Our goal was to find a cleaner that effectively removes oils and grease, is safely useable on any marble surface, and is streak-free. Below is why each of these is important.

Remove Oils and Greases

Ultimately the goal of the cleaner is to keep your marble looking new, and to do this the cleaner must prevent stains.

Stains on marble occur when foreign objects are given time to settle into the pours of marble and create a stain below the marble surface. Therefore, if a cleaner removes these substances before they have time to penetrate the marble surface and become a stain then the cleaner has done its job.

This is where removing oils and greases comes in. Unlike water, oils and other greases will not quickly evaporate from the marble surface. Therefore this extra time the oil has to sit on the marble surface enables the oils to penetrate the stone and leave a stain.

Unfortunately due to chemistry of oil and water using just water to remove oils from your marble surface will not work.

Have you ever tried washing oily dirty dishes in your sink without dish soap. You may be able to remove parts of the grit with the force of spraying water, but you will not be able to complete the job. Cleaning your marble will be the same way.

You may ask, well why not just use soap and water. This will work, and in the short term this method is fine, however we do not recommend this method for the lifetime of your marble.

Here’s why. Have you ever used a dish soap to wash your hands? Do you recall how you had to scrub your hands for 10-15 seconds just to get the soap off your hands. Well when you add soap to your marble, you will have to do the same thing to remove it. Therefore, more often than not you will leave a thin film of soap on your marble when your finished cleaning.

This is ok if you do this a couple of times, but your marble will last forever, so if you do this for years you will begin to create a soapy film over the surface of your marble that will ultimately remove the classic shiny look and thus the beauty of the stone.

Let’s be honest, marble is the best looking stone you can buy for your home. Since you have marble, I’m guessing you agree. So we urge you not to endanger your marble’s awesome look to save 15 dollars on a cleaner every couple of months.

Ok enough harping on why you need a marble cleaner. Now that we have gone over why you need a marble cleaner to remove oils and greases, let’s test and see which one is best!

Safety of Use

Universal pH Indicator paper

The marble cleaner we chose must be able to clean the marble, not destroy it. This may seem a little extreme, but most traditional household cleaners will actually etch the marble surface thus doing more harm than good.

Marble is made of calcium carbonate, and this compound chemically reacts with acid if they encounter one another. The chemical reaction is called etching, and results in a small spot of your marble surface being dissolved leaving behind ugly dull marks on your stone.

To determine if the cleaner is safe for your marble, we need to determine if the marble cleaner is acidic. We will do this with universal pH paper.

You may remember litmus paper from your high school chemistry; it essentially tells you the pH of a liquid. Universal Indicator paper does the same thing, but gives you more specifics on the actual pH of the liquid rather than simply saying acidic, neutral, or basic?

You will see a lot of marble cleaners that say in their sales pitch or introduction, “pH neutral” meaning they have a pH of around 7. Although this is good to prevent etching, you are going to have a hard time effectively removing greases at this pH level.  The cleaner will either need to be acidic or alkali to actually remove greases and oils from your marble.

As we have said being acidic is not an option with marble, so your marble cleaner will have to have a pH level of at least 7, and to be an effective cleaner it will need to be alkali (sometimes called basic) which means a pH of greater than 7.

The higher the pH level the better the cleaner will perform against oils, fats, and greases that are left on the surface. Not only will a higher pH preform better, it will deliver results faster.

CleanFax.com recommends a pH level of 8.5-11 to remove oils, 11.5-12.5 to remove oils, fats, and proteins, and finally 12.5-14 to remove heavy greases. This gives us an idea of the pH levels that will effectively remove greases, however, at what point to we begin to damage our stone.

The Marble Institute of America recommends the use of ammonia to remove soap scum, but warns that repeated or frequent use can possibly dull the surface of marble. Ammonia has a pH or roughly 11.5-12, therefore a safe marble cleaner needs to be below a pH of 11.5.

After this research, we determined that for a marble cleaner to be safe it’s pH levels need to be between 7-11.5. The closer the cleaner is to 11.5 the better job it will probably do, however, pH is not the only thing that determines the effectiveness of a cleaner. So we let the tests do the talking!

Streak-Free

Have you ever cleaned windows on a hot day? You spray your window cleaner on the window begin wiping it down and then realize that half the window cleaner has evaporated and left streaks on your windows. Streaks from cleaners are frustrating, and effectively counterproductive and we want to avoid them at all cost.

A lot of commercially available cleaners will say “Cleans and Shines marble” or “Cleans and Protects.” We feel like this is impossible to do both.

A cleaner is designed to remove oils and greases from a surface, yet, at the same time its going to polish or protect it by adding oils to the surface. We think this will be very difficult for a cleaner to achieve, and by trying to accomplish two goals in one bottle, the performance of the cleaner will suffer.

How we tested

Removal of Oils and Greases, Safety of use, and streak-free are our three metrics that we used to objectively determine which marble cleaner preforms best. Below is how we tested each of these:

Does it Remove Oils and Greases?

Oil Removal Test Setup

To run this test we created sections on a mirror with tape and applied a teaspoon of olive oil to each section. We then added approximately 2 teaspoons of each marble cleaner to their respective section. We allowed the cleaner to sit on the oil for approximately five minutes, then we wiped up each section with clean paper towels with as close to identical number of swipes and pressure as possible.

For each test we had a control section where we applied no cleaner. We wiped up the cleaner sections and the control and we then compared the oil removed from the cleaner sections to the control section.

After we finished wiping up the marble cleaner and oil, we evaluated how well the marble was at removing the oil. We measured this in a percentage of oil removed from the surface. 100 % being the best, as all the oil was removed.

The mirror was used rather than marble because it is much easier to see how much oil was left behind after the oil and cleaner was wiped up. The mirror made it much easier to quantify the removal of the oil for each cleaner.

Universal pH Indicator Paper

Is it Safe to use?

The safety of use is an essential requirement to ensure that the marble cleaner does not damage the marble during cleaning. This is tested by determining the pH level of the cleaner.

As we discussed above a safe cleaner is defined by having a pH between 7 and 11.5, this will be determined using universal pH Indicator paper.

Is it Streak-Free?

To determine if the cleaner left the surface streak free we tested the cleaner on a mirror so the streaks would be easily identified.

Streak Free Test Setup

We added two teaspoons of marble cleaner to the mirror and wiped up the surface with a new clean paper towel. We used a repeatable motion to make the test as similar as possible with each cleaning solution. Short of having a cleaning robot, this was the best we could do to design an experiment that was a completely objective judgement for each cleaner.

After the cleaner was wiped off the mirror we recorded any streaks left behind.

Results

The Winner

After running these three test we are able to say that the MarbleLife Marble and Travertine cleaner is the best marble cleaner for all your marble surfaces.

Pros:

• The spray bottle is easy to use and gets great coverage of the marble surface.
• It has a pH level of approximately 10 to 10.5 which is within the zone of an effective safe marble cleaner.

• It was the best performer to remove the olive oil from the surface (95 % removed), and also delivers a streak free clean!

Cons:

• Slightly more expensive than the some of the competition. However, we feel its worth the extra couple of dollars!

Our Pick For Best Marble Cleaner

You can’t beat MarbleLife’s Marble and Travertine Cleaner, and its backed by the largest marble restoration and care company in North America.

The Runner up

Another great product that we recommend is the MB Stone Care MB-5 Marble Cleaning Spray.

Pros:

This cleaner is great.

• The spray bottle is easy to use and gets great coverage of the marble surface.

• It did a great job of removing the oil from the mirror (90% removed), and delivered a streak free shine.

Cons:

• Slightly more expensive than the some of the competition. However, we feel its well worth the extra money!

• pH of approximately 7. So we worry that tougher greases or fats may be more difficult to remove with this cleaner. (The bottle says the pH should be 9, however, we ran 3 separate tests and got an outcome of 7 all three times. )

Runner Up

MB Stone Care’s MB-5 Marble Spray Cleaner. This is an excellent cleaner that will do a great job on all your marble surfaces.

The Competition

​Some of the runner ups were not to far behind, the 409 Stone Cleaner had a pH level of 11 so it will be a tough grease fighter, but it left behind a small fraction of streaks and only removed 85-90% of the olive oil from the surface. The 409 is also a very affordable option, so if you are on a tight budget then this one may be for you!

The Granite Gold cleaner also did a solid job of removing oil by removing 85 % of the oil and delivered a completely streak free shine. However, its low pH level of 6.5-7 worried us a little bit. We measured the cleaner to be slightly acidic which could possibly harm the marble, however, this is a very mild acid and should not be a problem.

The Black Diamond Marble and Tile concentrate delivered a streak free shine but did not do a very good job of removing the oil, and with a pH of 7 we worry about its ability to tackle tough greases. We found that once the concentrate was added to water it lost some cleaning power. It removed 65-70% of the oil compared to 50% of the control.

We do not recommend the Zep Cleaner + Protector. The cleaner is designed to clean and protect, and as we expected the cleaning power and streak free look suffered. The cleaner did not really do much better then the control, about 60 % of the oil was removed, and was the worst performer to deliver a streak free shine.

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