After examining over 30 toilet paper brands, we bought the 13 best and put them through a detailed head-to-head testing process. As is typical, our testing is both objective and "in real life". We formulated and executed repeatable, comparative, objective tests, and collated the in-use findings of six different households. We've now tested for more than a year and a half, continuously examining for strength, absorption, cleanability, and softness/comfort. We developed an "effectiveness coefficient" that is used to accurately compare the actual value of each roll. Toilet paper value is a function of more than the sticker price. We are confident that our effectiveness coefficient will guide you to true function and value purchase decisions.
Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly certified. Forest Stewardship Council certified from responsible source
Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly certified. Forest Stewardship Council certified from responsible source
Forest Stewardship Council certified from responsible sources. Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly certified. Partnered with Arbor Day Foundation to plant 3 trees for every tree used in Northern Ultra production
Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly certified. Forest Stewardship Council certified from responsible source
Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certified
RV/Marine Compatible?
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Safe for Sensitive Skin?
Yes
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GearLab Effectiveness Coefficient: 1 | Water Absorbed Per Sheet (ounces): 0.25
REASONS TO BUY
Strong; you need less to do the job
Perfect cleaning effectiveness
Good value
REASONS TO AVOID
Moderate dissolvability
After ordering products based on our test results, testers and users alike were unsurprised that Charmin Ultra Strong Mega topped the list. This product satisfies the majority of users. It is excellent for those looking for comfort as well as those looking for performance. It topped the scales in our objective tests of strength and absorption and was nearly as soft and gentle as the gentlest in our review. While this Charmin product is more expensive than most, its effectiveness per sheet tilts the value equation back in its favor a little bit. We found that a single sheet from this roll will do what it takes four sheets of the least effective competitors to do. If you can adjust your usage habits accordingly, "expensive" options like this standard-setting Charmin product are not, in fact, much more expensive than the "value" options.
Our proprietary, mathematically-derived effectiveness coefficient can be thought of as a multiplier of sorts. This coefficient answers the question of how many sheets of the TP it will take to do the job relative to others. A lower number is better. In this regard, the Charmin Ultra Strong tops the charts. The value will be a function of the effectiveness, your associated usage patterns, and the actual cost per sheet. Diligent users can find better value with the more effective (albeit more expensive per sheet) options than with flimsy alternatives. The main drawback of the stronger options is that some plumbing systems will struggle with the robust sheets, especially if they come in big wads. We suggest making sure your plumbing can handle it before getting too excited about the robust Charmin Ultra Strong.
Our first recommendation when shopping for toilet paper.
GearLab Effectiveness Coefficient: 2 | Water Absorbed Per Sheet (ounces): 0.25
REASONS TO BUY
effective
good value
dissolves well
REASONS TO AVOID
moderate softness
The Amazon Brand Presto toilet paper is a great option for those looking for a well-balanced, cost-effective product. Presto paper earned an overall above-average score in our metrics but stood out in our strength and dissolve tests — two paper characteristics that are respectively paramount to personal hygiene and the wellness of one's plumbing. As far as strength tests go, Presto gave an across-the-board good performance with the exception of the wet phase of the tests, where it did relatively poorly, bringing down the rest of the scores slightly.
Testers were mixed in their assessment of the softness of Presto paper, thus making literal the old adage about opinions. However, the overall score for softness was about average for the class. As for the effectiveness and absorption of the paper, Presto's performance was above average, showing some conflicting results wherein its ability to absorb liquids brought it down some in its ability to effectively clean up wet test materials. Despite its minor discrepancies, Presto delivers an all-around quality product at a very competitive price, making it a great value for thrifty shoppers.
Presto TP offers user a great value and and good bathroom experience to boot.
GearLab Effectiveness Coefficient: 2 | Water Absorbed Per Sheet (ounces): 0.25
REASONS TO BUY
Soft
Effective
Very absorbent
REASONS TO AVOID
Poor dissolvability
Charmin Ultra Soft Mega bathroom tissue is exactly what the branding suggests — it is among the softest in the class. But, Charmin has other notable attributes as well. For example, this paper's strength, effectiveness, and absorption scores are all well above average in a very competitive class. It's worth noting that the Ultra Soft's absorption results set the bar for the class. More than being high quality, this TP offers consumers good value as well.
This Charmin Ultra Soft bathroom tissue is fully functioning and effective. However, it had some irritating shortcomings. For instance, when starting a new roll, the perforated edge of the paper tends to tear and often separate the plies. Also, we had to use two hands to tear off the paper needed when in a seated position. These are minor issues, but frustrating nonetheless. All told, Charmin Ultra Soft lives up to its name, making it the go-to for a soft wiping experience.
If soft is what you want, soft is what you'll get with the Ultra Soft from Charmin.
GearLab Effectiveness Coefficient: 3 | Water Absorbed Per Sheet (ounces): 0.13
REASONS TO BUY
Dry cleaning effectiveness
Dissolves easily
REASONS TO AVOID
Low absorption
Not as soft as you'd like
The Angel Soft Double toilet paper is near the upper echelon of products for its all-around good performance. However, it should be noted that it tops the chart in our dissolve metric. For this reason, we have given it special recognition for the appeal it will have for those with less than robust plumbing. While this high dissolution rating is certainly a bonus for those with touchy toilets, this TP remains a solid, average, well-rounded choice. All of our testing households liked it and compared it favorably to the other top scorers. In our objective testing for absorption, this Angel Soft was nothing special. In similar testing for strength, the Angel Soft is surpassed by only a few options.
Our assessment of Angel Soft's cleanability has it performing about average. Similarly, softness was about average. One tester pointed out that it is "a step up from the lowest scorers here" and that it "rolls/tears a bit [more than the others] when it gets damp." All told, Angel Soft is a good choice for those a little concerned about their plumbing but still want a decently performing product.
Angel Soft TP wasn't as cushiony as we'd hoped, but it was as effective as the best.
Credit: Jediah Porter
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Scott 1000 TP is thin. You can see the light right through it.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Why You Should Trust Us
First, we purchased all of the products we tested at retail prices just like a typical consumer, and then distributed them to our team. We ran several repeatable tests that measured strength, absorption, dissolvability, softness, and cleaning effectiveness as well as conducted an office-wide anonymous survey to gather opinions about comfort and effectiveness. Beyond that, we took our work home, testing the toilet paper in our bathrooms and on camping trips. After weeks of testing, data entry, and analysis, we are confident that the information provided in this review will help you buy the right paper for your loo.
Our toilet paper testing is divided across five rating metrics:
Strength (25% of overall score weighting)
Softness (25% weighting)
Effectiveness (25% weighting)
Absorption (15% weighting)
Dissolvability (10% weighting)
Nick Miley and lead tester Genaveve Bradshaw have spent the last year researching and testing a variety of health and wellness products including air purifiers and juicers. As active toilet paper users for a combined 67 years, Nick and Genaveve are keen to find the best products that balance price value and performance. Toilet paper usage is an intimate experience that touches each person differently — our team took this reality into account while researching and testing. In the following review, we dive into the nitty-gritty particulars of methodology and share the results with our readers in a comprehensive yet easy-to-digest format.
Most of our testing was "real world" application in day-to-day usage.
We tested wet and dry strength with this suspended arrangement.
We tested absorption by measuring the amount of water a single sheet could absorb, to the nearest 1/10th of a gram.
Quilted Northern is another excellent option, which blends decent absorption, strength, and softness.
Credit: Laura Casner
Each type of TP gets a GearLab "Effectiveness Coefficient", calculated from strength, absorption, and cleanability. This value, rounded to a whole number on a range from 1-4, roughly represents the minimum number (or multiple) of sheets required to do a given job. Lower is better. The best products we tested require one sheet to do what another might require four sheets to do. Our mathematical deduction correlates almost perfectly with anecdotal and subjective assessments of the same thing. You need more of the flimsy stuff than you do the good stuff.
One of GearLab's interns testing bathroom tissue. This tot knows her doody.
Credit: Laura Casner
Analysis and Test Results
If we learned one thing from our analysis, it is that intuitive and subjective preferences are in line with the results of our objective testing. To put it another way, the TP we like is the stuff that performs best in our tests. We are quite excited about consumers using our objective measures to secure a high value when making informed toilet paper purchases. With so many products on the market, all with mystifying pricing schemes, confidently ascertaining value is difficult. Our testing helps ease the demands of this essential but admittedly mundane purchase.
So many choices! Good thing GearLab has sorted this mess out.
Credit: Laura Casner
Value
It is challenging to shop for toilet paper value, and it's a tall order to seek the "best bang for your buck". First, toilet paper is sold in a wide array of configurations. You can buy one roll at a time or in giant packages. You can get some sort of volume discount, or it can only seem like that is the case. Next, there isn't any standard size of the roll. "Standard" rolls from one company can be different from those of another company. And then there are a plethora of roll-size options. You'll see "double", "mega", "family mega", and "supreme", among others. Naming conventions vary from one company to another.
Toilet paper is a simple enough product but its value is difficult to ascertain.
Credit: Laura Casner
Further muddling the quest for value is the varying effectiveness of different products. As noted above, we found that one sheet of a great product can do the work of four sheets of the lowest-quality product. If you can adjust your usage patterns for differing effectiveness, you can get the best value from something other than the absolute cheapest product.
Value calculations require understanding just how much toilet paper you actually need for a given task. Objectively comparing strength helps in that assessment.
Credit: Jediah Porter
With all the variables in the assessment of a cost-effective TP purchase, you might assume it is hopeless to compare. There is some good news, though — a square from each type of toilet paper is essentially the same size. Yup, all TP squares have, more or less, the same dimensions. The largest differs from the smallest by just a few percentage points. This simplifies matters considerably because, when comparing the effectiveness of various toilet papers, you can correctly assume that each square is the same size.
With the above assumptions and findings, plus some discipline in your usage (i.e., use the minimum amount of tissue for the given job), you can calculate the real "best value" toilet tissue. It is a labor-intensive process but is one you can do with price, sheet count, and our "effectiveness coefficient". Try this step-by-step process to find your best value.
First, determine how much toilet paper you can store at any given time. Buying in bulk is, generally, the best value, but we can't all store hundreds of rolls. Narrow your shopping to package sizes that you can store. Next, intuitively weed out the products that are obvious outliers. The most expensive choices will probably remain too expensive, even after a critical analysis. The same goes for the least expensive choices; the absolute budget TP is likely not worth the time, money, and storage space.
Once you have narrowed your choices, identify the cost per sheet — or per 100 sheets, which is how prices are often broken down online. Make sure your denominator is the same for every product, and then identify the GearLab "Effectiveness Coefficient" for your selections. For example, product A cost 13 cents per 100 sheets and has an Effectiveness Coefficient of 4, while product B costs 34 cents per 100 sheets and has a coefficient of 1. Now, multiply the cost by the Effectiveness Coefficient for each product to get an approximation of the true cost. Product A appears very inexpensive, but it is far less effective. Its cost for a given amount of function is 52 (13x4). On the other hand, product B scores 34 (34x1). Thus, product B, used with some discipline, is a considerably better value than product A despite the initial purchase price.
This is a stack containing one sheet from each tested product. All the products have sheets that are essentially the same size as the others.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Intuitive assessments of function and value validate our mathematical approach and vice versa. What we propose with the use of our proprietary "Effectiveness Coefficient" isn't inherently unique, nor is it fully necessary. Critical thinking and actual value-oriented use of toilet tissue will support many of the same conclusions we have made mathematically.
Strength
With toilet tissue, strength matters. We tried a host of testing methodologies. The best and final test we developed is to spread a sheet or stack of sheets over a canning jar, holding it in place with the canning jar lid ring.
We then drop a small permanent marker (about the same diameter and shape as a finger) from 16 inches high. We start with one sheet of each type of TP and add sheets to the count until the aggregate effectively blocks the penetration of the dropped Sharpie. Our findings in this test correlate almost exactly with concurrent subjective testing. As part of our subjective tests, we tear sheets with our hands, back to back, and comparatively rate them.
Strength testing involved simulating, in a controlled fashion, the ability of the tissue to resist tearing by a semi-pointy object.
Credit: Jediah Porter
We perform a similar strength test on wet toilet tissue. We suspend the TP in the same fashion, wet the product with a fixed amount of water, and then add scale calibration weights until the paper fails.
The Charmin Ultra Strong is considerably ahead of the subsequent top performers in the strength test, which displayed a pronounced resilience in the wet paper drop test. Next up but over a point behind is Quilted Northern Ultra Soft and Strong — it also did well in the wet test but wasn't too shabby in the dry test either. Cottonelle Ultra Comfort and Amazon Brand Presto are above-average performers of note. Both of these products displayed decent results in the seated tear and the new roll tests.
Wet strength was tested with suspended, wetted sheets and incrementally adding known and controlled amounts of weight.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Absorption
For liquid clean-up tasks, you want your TP to be highly absorptive. All the TP here reviewed take up liquids quickly. As such, the rate of initial absorption is virtually indistinguishable between the different products. The amount of liquid absorbed, though, is significantly different across the different products. We test this by weighing the dry sheets first and then again after they are saturated with water, subtracting the two values from one another to determine the water uptake. The most absorbent sheets soaked up twice as much liquid as the least absorbent.
The most absorbent products in our test were Charmin Ultra Soft, Charmin Ultra GentleCare, Charmin Ultra Strong, and Quilted Northern Ultra Plush. At the other end of the spectrum, the minimalist Scott 1000 holds half as much liquid as the leading tissues.
Absorption matters for many toilet tissue applications. To objectively compare absorption potential, we measured the amount of water every single sheet could absorb.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Effectiveness
How well does a type of TP collect what it needs to collect? Assessment of this was purely subjective. That being said, we are confident in our subjective assessment of cleanability. Interestingly (but perhaps unsurprising), perceptions of cleanability are correlated with perceived and tested tissue strength. By and large, stronger products clean better.
Texture and strength play critical roles in the cleanability of toilet paper.
Credit: Laura Casner
The Charmin Ultra Strong and the Quilted Northern Ultra Soft and Strong clean the best but are a point apart, with Charmin earning a perfect score. The Charmin Ultra GentleCare, Cottonelle Ultra Comfort, and Quilted Northern Ultra Plush are up there too. Conversely, the Scott 1000 received an abysmal rating that shows just how much one sacrifices with this brand to save a little coin.
Cleaning ability was tested "in situ" and in real life, with direct comparisons made over months by a broad and deep team.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Softness
We aggregated the comparative softness assessment of about a dozen testers. We found notable agreement and are confident in our ranking of respective toilet paper softness.
The Charmin Ultra GentleCare is ahead of the rest. Even when we blinded testers from the brand messaging associated with toilet papers, it was clear that the Charmin Ultra Gentle option was one of the two softest products in our review. If you seek maximum comfort, look no further. It also scores quite high in the effectiveness evaluation, delivering leading performances in both the wet and dry tests. It is also well above average in its absorption properties.
The Charmin Ultra Gentle is exactly as advertised. This is the softest, gentlest toilet paper we assessed.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Next is Charmin Ultra Soft. The next echelon, at least a little behind these two super comfortable options, are Charmin Essentials and both top scorers. Predictably, Scott 1000 is the least soft in our test. One tester pointed out that Scott 1000 is "definitely the scratchiest".
This Cottonelle Comfort product wasn't the softest, but many testers liked the way it balanced comfort and effectiveness.
Credit: Jediah Porter
Dissolve
The dissolve metric is an analysis of how well a particular bathroom tissue breaks down in the toilet. Four products stand out in this regard. These are Scott, Presto, Angel Soft, and Seventh Generation in order of their dissolvability according to three tests performed in our laboratory.
To make a comparative yet practical assessment of a bathroom tissue's dissolvability, we use three standardized tests for each product. First, we do a "still dissolve" in which we put 10 squares of TP in water and note the consistency after 5 minutes. Angel Soft and Scott demonstrated a remarkable willingness to break down without any agitation. Next is the shaken dissolve test. In this test, we put 10 squares of TP in water and shake the container vigorously for one minute, then we pour the liquid and paper over a sieve noting what remains. Here we see that Scott is once again a leader. However, Angel Soft, Presto, and Seventh Generation are all tied as close seconds to Scott. Finally, and perhaps most practically, we conduct a flush test which entails placing 20 pieces of TP in the toilet bowl and letting them sit for one minute. The toilet is then flushed, and any remains are noted. Few products had trouble with this test, least of all the four class leaders, Scott 1000, Presto, Angel Soft, and Seventh Generation.
If you have concerns about your plumbing then it makes sense to put the dissolvability on you list of key TP characteristics.
Credit: Laura Casner
Septic or Environmental Concerns?
The Seventh Generation 100% Recycled toilet paper is for those purchasing for septic health or environmental concerns. It is among the most significantly recycled products in our test and is the 2-ply product that we'd recommend for older plumbing or septic systems. Many products have recycled content in them, but of those we tested, the Seventh Generation 2-ply is the best in this regard. The Scott 1000 is our first choice for those with septic concerns. The other positive attribute is that both are highly dissolvable, providing little resistance to going down on the first flush.
When it's all said and done, we don't want to have to think about TP. We just want it there when we need it.
Credit: Laura Casner
Conclusion
Choosing toilet paper isn't super complicated. However, it is important because you use it daily, and both comfort and effectiveness play into your satisfaction with your purchase. In some households, you go through enough toilet paper to render potential savings in the hundreds of dollars per annum. Therefore, you want to make calculated conclusions about which bathroom tissue to purchase. With good intention and review of our findings and metrics, we are confident you can secure toilet tissue that is the absolute best for your needs and budget.
—
Jediah Porter, Nicholas Miley, & Genaveve Bradshaw
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GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products. And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. No cherry-picked units sent by manufacturers. No sponsored content. No ads. Just real, honest, side-by-side testing and comparison.
