At last! A Dyson just for your wood f loor

THEY’RE great at cleaning carpets, but when it comes to getting dust and dirt off a wooden floor vacuum cleaners can leave a lot to be desired.

Now engineers at Dyson may have the answer – a new model designed specifically for hard flooring.

The firm’s cordless V6 Fluffy vacuum cleaner – which goes on sale today costing £399 – aims to cater for the growing trend for exposed wooden floorboards, ceramic tiles and vinyl or laminate flooring.

The key difference between the new technol-

‘Can pick up a bag of sugar in four seconds’

ogy and Dyson’s traditional bagless vacuums is in the roller bar.

Engineers have replaced the traditional spinning bristles – which were designed to drive dust out of a carpet – with a large soft nylon brush similar to a paint roller which scoops dust and dirt from hard floors.

Larger pieces of debris such as spilled cornflakes are grabbed by the soft material and passed into the machine’s suction stream, while microscopic grains of dust are brushed up by strips of carbon fibre filaments.

Dyson claims the V6 Fluffy is particularly good at sucking dirt out of the crevices between floor boards, and is able to pick up a whole 1kg bag of sugar in just four seconds.

Hard floors have surged in popularity in recent years, driven by a fashion for industrial and ‘shabby chic’ interior design styles. Market researcher The Freedonia Group estimates that there has been a 70 per cent increase in the use of hard flooring in the last two decades.

Dyson’s new cleaner, which is being produced in Singapore, runs for 20 minutes between battery charges. It can clean carpets and rugs as well as hard floors with the help of an attachable head.

Stephen Courtney, head of new product innovation at Dyson, said: ‘In homes today we see more hard floors, so we set out to solve the age- old problem of conventional cleaners simply snowploughing debris across the floor. We wanted a machine that could pick up scattered Cheerios, whilst also capturing fine dust.’