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Your skin has a natural pH of around 5.5, slightly acidic and part of what dermatologists call the acid mantle, a thin barrier that helps skin hold onto moisture and defend itself against irritants and bacteria. It's a number most of us never think about, except that our hands touch it constantly, usually right after they've touched something else: a counter, a doorknob, a cutting board, whatever just got wiped down.
With routines picking back up this fall (more hands, more counters, more wiping down), we got curious about what's actually in the surface cleaners sitting under most sinks. Including our own.
Why We're Talking About pH
Here's the short version: our Multipurpose Cleaner tests pH neutral (a 7, dead center on the scale), and that one fact is doing double duty.
It's why the bottle is safe for hands that touch it every single day: no gloves required, no dried-out knuckles by the end of a cleaning day. And it's also why the same bottle is safe across almost every surface in your home: counters, tile, stone, glass, sealed wood. A formula gentle enough for skin doesn't strip finishes or leave the residue that harsher, high-pH degreasers can, and it doesn't carry the etching risk that strongly acidic cleaners pose to natural stone like marble over time. One pH number, two reasons to reach for it: for your hands, and for your home.
Which raises the obvious question: what does pH actually measure, and why bother formulating around it?
What Is pH, Anyway?
pH is a 0–14 scale that measures how acidic or alkaline (basic) something is. 7 sits in the middle and is considered neutral; plain water lands here. Anything below 7 is acidic (lemon juice is around 2, black coffee around 5); anything above 7 is alkaline (baking soda sits around 9, bleach and oven cleaner can run 12–13).
For cleaning products specifically, sitting at either end of the scale is usually a feature, not a flaw. Alkalinity helps break down grease, which is why a lot of degreasers are formulated to sit high on purpose. Acidity helps dissolve mineral buildup and soap scum, and shows up often in disinfecting formulas, which is why others are formulated to sit low. Both are real advantages for specific jobs. It's also why cleaners that lean hard toward either extreme can be harsher with repeated contact: on hands that touch them daily, and occasionally on finished surfaces like sealed stone or wood over time.
Skin itself sits at that 5.5 mark, just on the acidic side of neutral. A cleaner formulated closer to that number is a different tradeoff than a high-alkaline degreaser: not automatically "better at cleaning," but better suited to a bottle that gets picked up and put down all day, every day.
The Test
We measured the pH of our Multipurpose Cleaner, ready-to-use (not the concentrate, since that's the form that actually touches counters and hands), using Universal Plastic pH Test Strips (0–14 range), alongside Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner, Method All-Purpose Cleaner, and Clorox Disinfecting Cleaner: three widely used surface cleaners spanning natural and conventional formulas. One bottle of each was tested multiple times, reading the color match against the strip's reference chart at the time specified on the packaging, to confirm the result was consistent rather than a one-off read. Full methodology available on request.
The Results
| Product | pH |
|---|---|
| L'AVANT Multipurpose Cleaner | 7 |
| Method All-Purpose Cleaner | 2 |
| Clorox Disinfecting Cleaner | 3 |
| Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner | 10 |
(Skin, for reference: ~5.5)
What It Means
The three we tested against landed at both extremes, not one. Lysol sits alkaline, which tracks with what a lot of degreasers are formulated to do: high pH helps break down grease, a real advantage for the toughest jobs. Method and Clorox, on the other hand, landed strongly acidic; low pH is common in formulas built to cut through mineral buildup and soap scum, or to disinfect. Different jobs, different ends of the same scale.
None of the three land anywhere near neutral. Ours does: a 7, and the closest of the four to skin's own 5.5. We formulated our Multipurpose Cleaner with citric acid and sodium carbonate together, specifically to land at neutral without giving up real cleaning power. It's not a claim that it replaces a dedicated degreaser or disinfectant for every job. It's a considered choice for the bottle that gets picked up daily, on hands and on nearly everything else in the house, where repeated contact with something at either extreme is the harsher habit over time.
Where You Can Use It
Because it's formulated pH neutral, the same bottle that's gentle on hands is safe across the surfaces you actually clean every day:
Countertops: quartz, laminate, butcher block
Tile: floors, backsplash, grout lines
Natural stone: marble, granite, soapstone (no etching risk from a strongly acidic formula)
Glass: mirrors, windows, shower doors, streak-free
Wood: sealed and finished wood surfaces
As the house gets wiped down more often this fall, that's reason enough to check what's actually in the bottle we reach for. Not just for our own hands, but for the kids climbing up on counters and the pets who find their way onto every surface five minutes later.
