The Best Mold Removers for a Cleaner and Safer Home

RMR is another brand that Vaamonde has often relied on. This mold and mildew stain remover is seriously popular — it has more than 17,000 five-star ratings (!). The customer-submitted before-and-after photos are pretty impressive, too. You can safely use this spray on a ton of surfaces, both porous and nonporous: bathtubs, decks, wood, vinyl siding, drywall, concrete floors, brick, shower doors, vinyl shower curtains, kitchen and bathroom tiles, grout, and more. All you need to do is spray the product on the area and skip the scrubbing — the ingredients will take care of the mold and mildew stains within 15 seconds. Some sprays leave behind mold odors, but this one promises to leave everything odor-free. One very happy reviewer wrote, “Holy crap! Real deal for sure. Got home from work and tried it out straight away on the mold we had going from the ceiling thanks to the upstairs neighbor flooding their tub. Sprayed it on, waited 15 seconds, wiped it off and bammmm! No more mold or stain.”

Mold Armor is another one of Vaamonde’s brand recommendations for reliable and effective mold removers. She notes that the company makes products for both homeowners and professional cleaners, as well as for indoor and outdoor surfaces. The range of places you can use this one is huge: tubs, shower doors, toilet seats, countertops, sinks, sealed grout, vinyl, trash cans, sealed fiberglass, sealed granite, glazed tile, laminate, formica, and linoleum (!). Not only does this bleach-based spray take care of mold and mildew, but it also cleans stains from algae, dirt, and grime and eliminates 99.9% of household bacteria, viruses, fungi, and germs in 30 seconds. (Gotta love a multitasking product.) Once you pre-clean the surface, spray it to clean and disinfect, and then wipe it down. You don’t even have to scrub. It forms a lasting barrier against mold and mildew, too. After they saw that the spray worked, one reviewer wrote that they “Called the other family members to see what I was seeing in disbelief.”

While Concrobium kind of sounds like an SAT vocabulary word, it’s actually an excellent mold remover. In fact, it’s one of Marina Vaamonde’s favorites. While this brand makes various products for specific surfaces, this one works on many of them, including drywall, wood, composite wood, plastic, concrete, metal, brick, stone, tile, grout, fabric, and furniture. (I mean, what’s left?!) As both a fungicide and a mildewstat, not only does Concrobium get rid of mold, it prevents mold regrowth by leaving behind an invisible barrier. To use the product, all you do is spray the area and let it dry — that’s it! (That’s my kind of cleaning.) This doesn’t contain any bleach, ammonia, or VOCs, and the 32 oz. bottle can clean up to 80–110 square feet. Concrobium saved this reviewer a ton of money: “We had a dishwasher leak that caused mold under about 8 feet of cabinet. A mold remediation company quoted $6,500 to fix it. Using concrobium to get all visible mold, and spraying it with a pump sprayer … I was able to get rid of all the mold.”

This product is designed to get rid of outdoor mold and mildew (plus moss, lichen, and algae), and you can use it on almost any surface without causing fading or other damage. Some possibilities are roofs, decks, siding, driveways, brick, and walkways. Once you apply it, your work is done; you don’t have to scrub, rinse, or pressure-wash the affected area, and it should stay stain-free for a year. This product is bleach-free, phosphate-free, non-caustic, non-acidic, and biodegradable — plus, it’s safe to use around plants. This 0.5 gallon bottle is small but makes three gallons of solution. (You’ll need to provide the spray bottle.) One reviewer called this “Greatest stuff ever,” and wrote, “I used this last spring on the north side of our house and patio area that always has mold and green algae growing on it. … I inspected the area last weekend and there is NO algae or mold growth on the house or the concrete patio area.” 

This spray cleanser wears a lot of hats, as it were: It’s an EPA-registered bactericidal, virucidal, fungicidal, mildewstat, AND carpet sanitizer. Vaamonde says that Benefect makes some of the best natural cleaning products around. This one, Decon 30, contains a nontoxic blend of extracts made from botanical essential oils that you can use on porous and nonporous surfaces such as wood, granite, carpet, tile, glass, metals, and plastics. It includes thymol, which comes from oil of thyme — so this product smells like thyme and not harsh chemicals. Plus, while some disinfectants need 10 minutes to do their job, Decon 30 only needs 30 seconds. It’s also an ECOLOGO Certified product (certified for reduced environmental impact) and is labeled by Amazon as being Climate Pledge Friendly (which recognizes products that have improvements in at least one aspect of sustainability). 

The brand Ecoclean is another of Vaamonde’s recommendations for homeowners who need to tackle mold. Their product Gone! has hundreds of 5-star reviews at Amazon and comes with a “60-day money-back promise.” Gone! (the exclamation mark is very important) gets rid of mold and mildew stains, as well as algae. Whether you want to clean shower walls, toilet bowls, tubs, stainless steel sinks, kitchen and bath tiles, brick, concrete driveways, decks, roofs, and so on, all you need to do is spray the mold remover on the affected area and rinse with water — you don’t even have to scrub for the product to work. Gone! contains bleach, but it also has an “odor counteractant” that helps control the smell. One gallon of it will cover 300–400 square feet. One reviewer raved, “Let me tell y’all something … this is liquid gold. I feel like the man on the OxiClean commercial where I should be screaming for you to try this product!!”

Don’t let the slightly creepy earthworm mascot put you off — this mold remover has tons of positive reviews on Amazon. Plus, Earthworm is a woman-owned business that makes environmentally responsible products — a nice company to support. This fragrance-free mold remover doesn’t contain harsh chemicals and is safe to use around kids and pets. Instead, it cleans your home with the key ingredients of enzymes and a plant-derived surfactant (to aid in the cleaning process). The company recommends this spray for use on tubs, tiles, counters, sinks, grout around toilets, fiberglass, shower doors, shower curtains, and more — “virtually any porous or nonporous surface,” according to the bottle. One reviewer noted, “I used this on my tub and grout. It worked for me and the added bonus was after Earthworm water drained from the tub, the enzymes cleared my drain as well. I didn’t have to use my Drano.” (Bonus!)