Is the New Diptyque Cleaning Spray Worth $40?

We tried using this fancy cleaning spray throughout our homes. Here's what we found.

The multi-surface cleaning spray is part of Diptyque's new La Droguerie line.

By Perry Santanachote and Kevin Doyle and Laura Murphy

There are few consumable products we’re willing to spend two crisp Jacksons on, and this new fancy cleaning spray from Diptyque is not one of them.

Well-known for its luxury candles, this fragrance brand’s foray into cleaning products this summer, with the launch of its La Droguerie line, garnered enough buzz for us to give it a try. Our team of three each used the multi-surface cleaner with vinegar in our respective homes, comparing it with our normal go-to cleaners and a homemade vinegar-based concoction.

Diptyque’s 500-milliliter refillable glass bottle is elegant enough to leave out on the counter, but the vinegar-based mixture it’s filled with doesn’t perform well enough to justify the $40 price tag (refills are $28). It does a decent job cleaning the shower, less so in the kitchen, and while its aroma may be likable to some, it’s a bit too much for others.

Here is our combined review.

A Pricey Throne Polish

What is the best use of a $40 luxury cleaning product? To clean an $800 luxury bidet toilet seat. The manufacturer of Kevin’s bidet toilet seat recommends against using harsh chemicals like alcohol or bleach, which can lead to discoloration and cracking. He can use the Diptyque without worrying about damaging the seat and likes that the vinegar provides some disinfecting power. “Just a few spritzes and a wipe with a damp sponge leaves the seat glistening,” he says. “The sharp scent of vinegar is soon tamed to a light lavender fragrance with hints of cedar that I imagine is how the bathrooms in the best homes of the Côte d’Azur smell.”

ALSO SEE: You’re Not Cleaning Your Toilet Brush Often Enough

A Scrappy, but Slow, Shower Spray

The Diptyque lived up to its promise in the shower. Kevin and Perry spritzed their glass shower doors and tile floors and let the solution stand for 30 minutes, as per the instructions for a “more thorough clean.”

The cleaner chews through soap scum, hard-water marks, and iron stains slightly better than homemade vinegar-based concoctions, but it’s no match for moldy or mildewy spots in the corners of the shower.

“The extremely pricey Diptyque works fine, but every spritz—and the two shower doors require many—feels like a hit to my bank account,” Kevin says. “I’d rather use my DIY cleaning mix and a little bit more elbow grease and not feel like I’m spraying money down the drain.”

RELATED: Cleaning Tips to Make Your Bathroom Sparkle

It Comes Second to Many in the Kitchen

In the kitchen, Diptyque’s grease-cutting power isn’t quite equal to the task or as easy to use as our preferred kitchen cleaners: Windex for Kevin and Method for Perry.

“The Diptyque cleans my grease-spattered microwave nicely, but no better than Windex, which costs a fraction of the price, doesn’t drip as much, powers through grease, and only requires wiping away—not rinsing, like Diptyque,” says Kevin. “I also prefer the scent of Windex in the kitchen because it smells cleaner than Diptyque’s dominant melange of vinegar and lavender, which I find better suited to the bathroom.”

Perry cooked a few batches of bacon without a splatter guard to really let the grease go to town on her induction cooktop. The Diptyque makes a good effort but can’t quite get over the finish line, leaving a considerable amount of greasy residue. She repeated the test with a Grove multipurpose cleaner, and it performs similarly, perhaps slightly better. “Ultimately, I went back to my Method spray to finish the job,” she says. “Method always gets the job done the first time.”

A Streaky Shine

One thing that vinegar is really good for is cleaning glass, so Perry tested the Diptyque on a large floor mirror smeared across with her dog’s nose prints near the bottom and her nephew’s forehead prints about 2 feet above that (yes, they both know how pretty they are). The Diptyque is completely unsuited for this job, leaving streaks everywhere. The vinegar does much better but runs down the vertical surface too quickly. Nothing beats Windex, which is formulated for this very task.

The Scent Knows No Boundaries

The nostril-stinging tang of vinegar suggests some disinfecting power to Kevin and is fine for the bathroom, especially after it fades and leaves only a clean scent of lavender with a hint of cedar. But he finds the fragrance overpowering for the kitchen, where he prefers an olfactory blank slate that he can fill with the aromas of cooking. “My spouse, on the other hand, could not get enough of the fragrance and said he’d welcome it in every room of our home,” he says. “But he is someone who likes to use scented candles at the dinner table, which I consider criminal.”

Laura also prefers using Diptyque in the bathroom because of the lovely lavender scent, specifically, the guest bathroom. “It would never be an everyday cleaner for me because it is too expensive,” she says. “It’s for show, status, and special occasions.”

Perry is sensitive to fragrances and falls physically ill at the whiff of many cleaners, perfumes, and scented products. The Diptyque cleaner was no exception, but on a 1-to-10 scale from pleasant to offensive, she’d rate it a 6. “I don’t get nauseous using it as long as I leave the room as it sits for 30 minutes to work. But I don’t like the smell at all, and it hangs in the back of my throat so much that I need to gargle after using it,” she says. “It smells nothing of lavender, cedar, or fig tree to me.”

If scented vinegar is something you’re after and $13 sounds like a more reasonable amount to pay, Perry recommends The Laundress Scented Vinegar, which smells more subtle and contains much fewer ingredients.

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