Best Showerhead for 2024 [CNET]

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$21 at Amazon

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$100 at Amazon

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$94 at Amazon

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The affordable High Sierra Classic Plus showerhead gets all of the basics right. It sprays in a wide pattern with great coverage and plenty of firmness. I tend to like a relaxing stream on my body and a firm spray on my face and hair. The Classic Plus doesn’t offer any alternate spray pattern settings, but the main one balances both of those needs well. If you tend to find a good default and stick with it, look no further. 

The Classic Plus has a simple and elegant design. It’s one of the most affordable showerheads on this list and conserves water as well with a 1.5 gpm rating. If you’re looking for something fancy with a wide variety of settings, I have plenty of alternate options below, but this is the Amazon Echo Dot of showerheads. It’s simple, affordable and elegant. It’s also powerful, even with low water pressure or hard water. If you don’t care about extras and just want something to get the job done well, go with the water-saving High Sierra Classic Plus. Available in brushed nickel, bronze, polished brass, matte black or a chrome finish.

Honorable mentions

Kohler Forte 22169: Kohler’s showerhead provides nice coverage. The main setting strikes the necessary balance between feeling firm and still relaxing. You can easily switch to a concentrated massage mode or a fine mist. Overall, it’s a solid, well-balanced fixed showerhead option that you should consider if you like the look or the brand. It even saves water with a 1.75 gpm rating. It simply didn’t stand out as much as the ones above and the concentrated massage stream is too narrow to be useful. 

Delta In2ition Two-in-One: This Delta showerhead features a clever adjustable showerhead design in which a handheld shower is nested within the main showerhead. The main shower provides the full coverage option, and the handheld shower offers a more intense stream. You can also run both the main and handheld shower at once, though the water pressure expectedly dips a bit, and I’m not a fan of low water pressure. The handheld showerhead easily pulls free, or you can leave the shower arm in place for a stationary massage stream. All of the settings are functional but the main coverage option is a little too weak for my tastes. The main showerhead is also a little hard to pivot, but that’s a minor nitpick. This is a competent shower that’s worth your consideration, but the little drawbacks took away just enough to prevent it from ranking higher for me. 

Not recommended

Speakman S-2252-E175: None of the showers I tested were outright bad, but this model from Speakman doesn’t have a strong enough stream for my tastes. The main mode is fine if underwhelming. The alternate nozzle setting effectively just lets the water pour straight out without any added water pressure or water flow at all. Overall, it was a low-water-pressure shower experience.

Culligan WSH-C125: This affordable model from Culligan includes a shower filter and has a bunch of different settings. Changing between the nozzle settings is a pain. The main shower works well enough, but none of the alternate modes are inspiring. Again, this is a competent bathroom shower, but you have plenty of better options.

The price, finish and materials can vary wildly, and you can also look for the best showerheads with a lower gallons-per-minute rating if water conservation is a concern. You can get a fixed showerhead, which is attached to the wall, or one that includes a handheld sprayer. Some showerheads offer a wide variety of spray patterns (you don’t have to be limited to rainfall if you want to switch your spray setting). Whether it’s a handheld, dual, fixed, low-flow, high-pressure, combination or rainfall, your showerhead must have the essentials for hassle-free bathing: faucet, flow restrictor, filter, flexible hose and swivel ball.

Mount type: Depending on your shower setup, you’ll want to choose either a wall or ceiling-mounted showerhead

Settings and features: Some showerheads offer multiple stream types and pressure levels including pulsing massage, rainfall and wide-spray. You can even score a showerhead with a built-in speaker for listening to music and podcasts while you wash up. Feature-heavy showerheads typically cost more so consider what your needs are beforehand.

Finish: You’ll likely want your showerhead to match or at least complement the other metal accents in your shower. Showerheads are available in loads of styles and finishes, including chrome, nickel, copper, bronze and black.

Cost: Showerheads start at about $25 and go well into the hundreds of dollars. Settle on a price range before you start narrowing your search.

I’ve taken a lot of showers over the past couple of weeks. When testing a showerhead system, I look at a lot of factors: The diameter of the face, the gallons-per-minute output, the number of settings, the materials, the design and more. We also run an anecdotal test on the water flow, water pressure and power of the spray pattern with dried egg yolk. More than anything, I showered and noted how each shower experience felt.

I leave each model installed for a couple of days so I can take a variety of showers. During the first shower with a new shower system, I’m paying close attention to each spray pattern and how they feel, but I also want to shower when I’m not thinking about it as much. With each model, I shower when I’m groggy in the morning and do a post-workout shower to cool down. 

After every shower, I take notes on the shower experience. Was it firm, relaxing or both? Was the showering experience intense enough to get the soap and shampoo off quickly or did I have to change settings? Is it easy to change settings? 

For the egg test, I brushed egg yolk onto a cutting board and let it dry for 24 hours. Then I held the board 20 inches from the showerhead while it ran for 10 seconds and noted how much yolk was removed. I ran this test for each setting on each showerhead. Most only removed a little yolk if any, but a few settings proved weaker or stronger relative to the rest.

Different showers check different boxes, but at the end of the day, what mattered most to me was the actual showering experience. None of the models I tested were terrible, but a few rose above the rest and cleaned up the competition.

A showerhead’s gallons per minute is the common way to measure a unit’s pressure. Most showerheads range somewhere between 1.25 and 2.5 gmp. The higher the gpm, the more pressure your showerhead will be capable of.

Most showerheads do not require the expertise of a plumber or handyman to install. With simple tools such as a wrench or screwdriver and a stepladder. You may also need thread tape but that is commonly provided alongside the showerhead with purchase. 

Most showerheads don’t have filters but you can purchase specialty showerheads to filter out impurities in your water such as chlorine and scale. 

Most wall-mount and ceiling-mount showerheads share a universal connection. You shouldn’t have to worry about matching the showerhead to your specific shower unless you are dealing with an unusual design or looking to change the type of mount from your existing one.