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If you spend Sufficient time on Instagram, you can begin to get the idea that the biggest problem America faces is water. And that the best shower water filters are the only answer. In recent years, a new generation of stylish filtered showers has arrived to grab our collective source of social media – and perhaps our subconscious – with a terrible question.
Can you really trust the water coming out of your shower?
The answer, According to Wired reportingIt is not always encouraging. Filter showers often make bold pronunciations about what your tubes and shower water filled with chemicals can worsen in your body, while otherwise it may be the only peaceful five minutes of your day. If you can get rid of chlorine or pollutants in your water, the argument goes, it may be cure for your most embarrassing problems: everything, from red hair to dyed hair to dandruption, hair loss, eczema, dry skin, blackheads and psoriasis heart stroke.
The best shower water filters on this list are really good enough to remove corrosive chlorine compounds that cities add to your tap water to kill bacteria. And so was this our focus. Perhaps half of the country’s water systems, including New York and Seattle, use chlorine to disinfect city water supply. But most large metropolitan areas use a more stable substance called chloramine that is thought to be less carcinogenic. Chloramine is more difficult to filter – and not all shower filters succeed.
In fact, performance changes were shocking major in some cases. So let’s say you don’t like chlorine in your water? And you live in a city? These are the shower rods we recommend.
For more purity filters and tests, look at our guides in The best back water filters, The best air purifiersAND The best internal air quality monitors. For more ways to flatten your bath, look at our guides in The best bidet, Best electric toothbrushesAND The best eco-friendly cleaning products for your home.
Updated April 2025: We have added the Filters of Weddell Duo, Hydroviv and Curo, and updated our previous election descriptions after testimony testing. We also updated prices and connections throughout.
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How have we tested and what have we tested
Photo: Matthew Corfhage
The filtered shower market remains new and mostly unregulated, and performance claims are only rarely publicly supported by independent data. We have made many requests, but few shower filter companies submit their lab results. (Thank you, aquasana, marryAND beat to be exceptions.)
Some manufacturers told us that independent laboratories and certification bodies are supported, and that data is coming. Many of them offered customer satisfaction surveys instead. All this means that some skepticism is guaranteed.
And so I got out of the test boxes at home, instead. First I tested the total levels of chlorine in water without any filtration, a measure that includes either free chloride or chlorine interacted with whatever it is in your tubes. Then I tested the water filtered by the shower. I have performed each test several times to account for inaccuracies or fluctuations in the test and at the municipal chlorine level. In most cases, I did this over many days.
For the testing, I avoided test strips at home with unsafe pain, and instead I turned out somewhat bad chemical indicators and used digital and chemical tests designed for pools and aquariums.
We also tested total solids dissolved using a Meter tdsand the effects of the filters tested separately at pH in order to evaluate the effects but also to verify the reliability of the chemical test results.
The effectiveness of the filters comes down over time, of course, depending on how much pollution is filtered out of water – this is why filters should always be changed. As we update this guide, we will continue to test the most effective shower filters to see how their efficiency changes over time – and add any new shower filter that we are able to recommend.
What shower filters probably don’t
The conclusion is that you probably should not expect these shower filters to soften the mineral rigidity of your water or remove most of the substances.
After all, a filter should be relatively small to fit in a shower. And yet you are required to filter water gallons every minute, driven to high temperature and high pressure. A shower filter presents a frightening engineering challenge, compared to the countertop water filters that treat only a small amount of water in a time-or a heavy osmosis device that can be inserted into your plumbing under the sink.
Then what do these shower filters actually do, in a way we can measure? They filter chlorine and chlorine compounds, mainly through chemical reactions. Almost every American city adds to low concentrations of chlorine or chlorine compounds in drinking water to kill potentially harmful bacteria. This is all good and good when the water is still in the pipes. But chlorine is not exactly great for your hair or skin, and few people like to drink it. Some are also particularly susceptible to taste or wind, or prone to skin reactions.
The most prominent shower filters in the home rely partly on a mixture of zinc-backed called KDF-55, which are known to be quite effective in neutralizing “free” chlorine in chlorine-treated systems. Other common substances used to treat chlorine and chlorine compounds include calcium sulfite and activated or catalytic carbon. The most effective filters use these in a combination. The main thing I was able to verify and try was the ability of shower filters to remove the total water chlorine content that came out of your shower.
We have seen little evidence that the most common types of shower filters have a lot of effect on the softness or stiffness of water, or the creation of calcium. In fact, Some early academic studies present evidence that they do not. The shower filters we have tested also had little effect on the solid amount dissolved in our water, according to one -meter TDS – II measurements, the filters are not removing a large amount of materials or minerals from the water.
I have not been able to try claims from some companies that these filters remove heavy metals like Lead and Arsenic, which thankfully are not in my tubes. We found only one company, Weddell, whose filter was certified to remove the lead. So far, so good! However, if you believe you have a dangerous or arsenic lead in your water, you should certainly not try to fix the problem with a custom shower. Talk to a water treatment professional or your public health authority.
If you live in a large American city, chlorine is not likely to be what your city uses to treat water in its pipes. New York, Chicago, Seattle and Phoenix use chlorine, of course. But Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston and the largest cities in Texas do not.
More than half of large American cities use a substance called chloramine, a more durable and durable chemical that is more difficult to filter and prove. This is also what was in the water supply. To try, I came out useful Digital And a somewhat bad chemical indicator, and then tested the ability of each shower filter to treat any of a number of chlorine compounds in the water.
First I tested the total chlorine in water without any filtration, then tested the water filtered by the shower head. I did each test several times to account for inaccuracies or fluctuations in the testing and at the municipal chlorine level. In most cases, I did this over many days. As we update this guide, we will continue to test the most effective shower filters to see how their efficiency changes over time – and add any new shower filter that we are able to recommend.
