Which Selleys multi-purpose cleaner do you need, and what separates them?

Selleys' multi-purpose cleaners divide into two families that answer different questions. Sugar Soap is the cleaning-power family — professional strength formulas built to power through tough grease, grime and marks, and the range you want before painting. Complete Clean is the disinfectant family — formulated to kill germs as well as clean. If your problem is dirt, start with Sugar Soap. If your problem is hygiene, start with Complete Clean.

The second choice, within either family, is format: concentrate, ready-to-use liquid, or wipe. Concentrates are diluted and suit larger areas such as walls and ceilings; ready-to-use products save the mixing step; wipes are for everyday spot cleaning. Choosing the format that matches the size of the job is what makes these products feel effective or frustrating.

What this category covers

General-purpose cleaners for surfaces throughout the home — walls, floors, benches and the everyday marks that do not belong to any one room. Selleys notes that Super Kleen, Household Tough Wipes and Bathroom Tough Wipes are convenient for any spot cleaning around your home: safe for use on most washable surfaces, removing dirt easily and without streaking, with an anti-bacterial formula that leaves things hygienically clean.

How to choose

Cleaning walls and ceilings, and preparing to paint

This is Sugar Soap's core job. When you need to clean walls and ceilings, the Selleys Original Sugar Soap range easily cuts through tough dirt. Selleys Original Sugar Soap is a professional strength, high performance formula that powers through tough grease and grime, and Selleys also recommends it for cleaning surfaces prior to painting and wallpapering.

That recommendation is worth taking seriously if you are about to paint. Paint bonds to what it is applied to, and a wall carrying a film of kitchen grease or airborne grime gives it something other than the wall to bond to. Cleaning first is not an optional extra step — it is part of the paint job.

For larger areas, choose Selleys Original Sugar Soap Super Concentrate, a powerful cleaner for all surfaces from walls to floors. Selleys' own guidance is to use the concentrates for larger areas and before painting walls and ceilings, and the wipes for everyday use.

Ready-to-use wall and surface cleaning

Selleys Instant Sugar Soap is a ready-to-use wall and surface cleaner, ideal for removing marks and stains from walls and floors, and specifically formulated to clean without scratching. The no-scratching point matters on painted walls: a mark removed along with the sheen of the paint around it is not an improvement.

Everyday spot cleaning

Selleys Sugar Soap Wipes are pre-moistened wipes for getting rid of dirt and grime quickly. They are the everyday format — the one that catches a mark on the day it appears, before it becomes a job for the concentrate.

Heavy-duty cleaning

Selleys Super Kleen is the heavy-duty cleaner for tough stains and grime, and Selleys describes it as suiting a variety of surfaces and as safe for use on most washable surfaces.

Floors

Floors get their own two products. Selleys Sugar Soap with Disinfectant for Floors is a professional strength, superior high performance formula that powers through tough stains, dirt, grease and grime while leaving surfaces hygienically clean — the Sugar Soap approach with disinfectant added. Selleys Complete Clean Multi Surface Floor Cleaner comes at it from the other direction: a disinfectant floor cleaner that kills 99.9% of germs and powers through tough dirt for a hygienic clean.

Disinfecting as you clean

Selleys Complete Clean Multipurpose Spray is a disinfectant cleaner formulated to kill 99.9% of germs and cut through grease, grime and stains within kitchens, bathrooms and other household areas. Selleys Complete Clean Multipurpose Disinfectant Cleaning Wipes are the ready-to-use wipe version, for convenient and easy clean-up of surfaces within kitchens, bathrooms and other household areas, specially formulated to cut through grease and grime.

The products in this range

Product	Best suited to
Original Sugar Soap	Professional strength cleaning of tough grease and grime; recommended before painting and wallpapering.
Original Sugar Soap Super Concentrate	Larger areas — walls to floors; dilute for the job.
Instant Sugar Soap	Ready-to-use; marks and stains on walls and floors, without scratching.
Sugar Soap Wipes	Everyday spot cleaning, pre-moistened.
Super Kleen	Heavy-duty cleaning of tough stains and grime.
Sugar Soap with Disinfectant for Floors	Floors — tough stains, dirt, grease and grime, left hygienically clean.
Complete Clean Multi Surface Floor Cleaner	Floors — disinfectant, kills 99.9% of germs, powers through tough dirt.
Complete Clean Multipurpose Spray	Kitchens, bathrooms and other household areas; kills 99.9% of germs.
Complete Clean Multipurpose Disinfectant Cleaning Wipes	Ready-to-use wipes for kitchens, bathrooms and other household areas.

There is a brand overview of the disinfectant range at Selleys Complete Clean. For outdoor surfaces rather than indoor ones, see the Selleys Outdoor Multi-Surface Cleaner 2L in the outdoor cleaning section.

The safety divide in this category — the eye classification is what separates them

These products all look like household cleaners and several are sold in an identical 750 mL bottle. On hazard they are not equivalent, and the difference is almost entirely about eyes. Four of them carry the signal word Danger for eye damage that may not fully reverse; three carry Warning for irritation that will; one carries nothing.

Group	Products	Classification
Danger — Category 1 eye damage	Original Sugar Soap Concentrate, Sugar Soap Original, Complete Clean Multi-Purpose Spray, Complete Clean Multi-Surface Floor Cleaner	H318: causes serious eye damage. The floor cleaner adds H315 (skin irritation). None are Dangerous Goods
Warning — Category 2A eye irritation	Instant Sugar Soap, Sugar Soap Wipes, Sugar Soap Super Kleen	H319: causes serious eye irritation. The wipes and Super Kleen add H315. Instant Sugar Soap carries H319 alone — no skin, inhalation or flammability classification
Not classified	Complete Clean Disinfectant Cleaning Wipes	Not classified as hazardous. No signal word, no hazard statement, no pictogram. Composition declared as 100% ingredients non-hazardous or below reporting limits
No classification published	Sugar Soap for Floors	No hazard classification is published for this product in the material available here — see product page. It is a dilutable alkaline sugar soap, so treat the concentrate accordingly

The distinction between H318 and H319 is not a matter of wording. Category 2A irritation is expected to settle. Category 1 damage may not — the safety data sheets for the sugar soap concentrates say plainly that the product can cause corneal burns. That is why the first aid instruction is fifteen minutes of irrigation with the eyelids held open and urgent medical attention, rather than a rinse at the tap. Alkali injuries to the eye are worse than acid ones for the same reason: they keep penetrating tissue instead of self-limiting.

The hazard belongs to the bottle, not to the bucket — which means it is at its worst during the part of the job everyone does without gloves. Every dilution on this page takes the concentrate to a small fraction of its neat strength: half a cup into five or ten litres of water. The moment that actually carries the Category 1 classification is the moment you tip the bottle, and that is exactly when most people are not wearing eye protection because "it is only sugar soap". If you wear goggles for one minute of this job, make it the decanting minute.

Sugar soap has a reputation as a mild, old-fashioned product, and in concentrate it is not. The active is sodium carbonate — washing soda — and its alkalinity is both the cleaner and the hazard: it saponifies grease so a cloth can lift it, and it is what the eye classification is about. A gentler formulation would be gentler on eyes and worse at the job.

The safest options are the ones already diluted for you. The Complete Clean Disinfectant Wipes are the only product here with no classification at all, and the reason is structural rather than formulary: they are supplied at use strength, already dosed onto the fabric, where nothing in the formulation reaches a classification threshold. If the question is "which of these is safest to have out with children in the house", that is the answer. Instant Sugar Soap is the next step up — ready to use, and H319 alone with no skin classification.

One product runs against the grain of the whole category, and it is worth knowing which. Complete Clean Multi-Purpose Spray is pH 2–3 — acidic — while every sugar soap here is alkaline at pH 10.6 to 11 and the Complete Clean floor cleaner is alkaline at 8.5–9.5. Never mix it with another cleaner, and do not use it on marble or granite, which it can etch permanently. The alkaline products have their own metal exclusions for the opposite reason: aluminium is amphoteric and is attacked by strong alkali as well as by acid, which is why the sugar soaps carry an aluminium and brass caution.

Comparing the cleaners on the numbers that decide the job

For a cleaner the deciding figures are pH, whether you dilute it, and how far a bottle actually goes.

Product	pH	Dilution	Yield per pack
Original Sugar Soap Concentrate	11	½ cup into a full 10 L bucket	1 L makes up to 80 L
Sugar Soap Original	~11	½ cup into ½ bucket (5 L)	750 mL makes up to 30 L
Instant Sugar Soap	~10.6	None — ready to use	750 mL bottle
Complete Clean Floor Cleaner	8.5–9.5	125 mL in 5 L general; 125 mL in 2.5 L to disinfect	750 mL makes 30 L general use
Complete Clean Multi-Purpose Spray	2–3	None — ready to use	750 mL spray bottle
Complete Clean Disinfectant Wipes	See product page	None — ready to use	120 wipes, 220 × 160 mm
Sugar Soap Wipes	See product page	None — ready to use	See product page
Sugar Soap for Floors	See product page	To suit the level of dirt — no fixed ratio published	See product page
Sugar Soap Super Kleen	No technical data sheet is published for this product — see product page

The two concentrates are not the same product in different bottles, and the difference is more than double. A litre of the Professional Strength Concentrate makes up to 80 litres of solution; a 750 mL bottle of Sugar Soap Original makes up to 30. Per litre of bottle that is 80 against 40, and the dilution instructions reflect it — half a cup into a full 10 L bucket for the concentrate, half a cup into 5 L for the standard. Using the concentrate at the standard's ratio doubles the strength you intended, on a product already classified for serious eye damage.

pH and hazard band track each other almost perfectly, with one instructive exception. The pH 11 sugar soaps are Danger; the pH 8.5–9.5 floor cleaner is Danger on the neat concentrate; the ready-to-use wipes carry the least of all. The exception is Instant Sugar Soap, which sits at pH 10.6 — within a few tenths of the concentrates — yet is classified only H319, Warning. Presentation, not just chemistry, is doing the work there: it is formulated ready to use rather than to be diluted, and it never exists in your hands at concentrate strength.

Dilution ratio is also a disinfection instruction, and it is easy to miss. The Complete Clean Floor Cleaner uses 125 mL in 5 L for general cleaning but 125 mL in 2.5 L to disinfect — twice the strength — with a 10-minute contact time. Mopping at the general-cleaning ratio and expecting the 99.9% germ-kill claim is the commonest way to get a clean floor that has not been disinfected. The same 10-minute contact time applies to the multi-purpose spray: spraying and wiping straight off cleans the surface without disinfecting it.

Two products publish no technical data at all. Super Kleen has a safety data sheet but no technical data sheet, and Sugar Soap for Floors publishes no fixed dilution — only a direction to match the strength to the dirt. On a floor that is advice to start weak: a bucket mixed too strong is discovered after the room is mopped, not on a test patch.

Common questions about Selleys multi-purpose cleaners

What is the difference between Sugar Soap and Complete Clean?

Sugar Soap is the cleaning range — professional strength formulas for tough grease, grime and marks, including surface preparation before painting. Complete Clean is the disinfectant range, with several products formulated to kill 99.9% of germs.

Which Sugar Soap should I buy?

Original Sugar Soap for professional strength cleaning and preparation before painting or wallpapering; the Super Concentrate for larger areas; Instant Sugar Soap if you want it ready to use; Sugar Soap Wipes for everyday spot cleaning.

Do I need to clean walls before painting?

Selleys recommends Original Sugar Soap for cleaning surfaces prior to painting and wallpapering, and points to the concentrates for walls and ceilings. Paint applied over grease or grime bonds to the grime rather than the wall.

What is the difference between concentrate and instant?

The concentrate is diluted and suits larger areas; Instant Sugar Soap is ready to use straight from the pack for walls and surfaces.

Which floor cleaner should I choose?

Sugar Soap with Disinfectant for Floors is a professional strength formula that powers through tough stains, dirt, grease and grime while leaving surfaces hygienically clean. Complete Clean Multi Surface Floor Cleaner is the disinfectant floor cleaner, described as killing 99.9% of germs.

Will these scratch painted walls?

Instant Sugar Soap is specifically formulated to clean without scratching, which makes it the safer choice on painted walls and floors.

Is there an anti-bacterial option for spot cleaning?

Selleys describes Super Kleen, Household Tough Wipes and Bathroom Tough Wipes as having an anti-bacterial formula that leaves surfaces hygienically clean, and as being safe on most washable surfaces without streaking.

Spray or wipes?

The spray is for cleaning a surface properly; the wipes are the convenient ready-to-use format for quick clean-ups. Both Complete Clean formats cover kitchens, bathrooms and other household areas.

Can I use these outdoors?

These are household cleaners. For outdoor surfaces, the outdoor cleaning section holds the Outdoor Multi-Surface Cleaner 2L and the Outdoor Window & Glass Cleaner 2L.