A garden hose is a garden hose… right? Wrong! In fact, you might be amazed at the breadth and variety of hose pipes on offer in your local DIY store or garden centre.
In our garden hose guide, we explain the different types of water hoses available, and explore what are the best garden hoses to buy in 2022.
What are the different types of water hoses?
Broadly speaking, there are five different kinds of garden hoses. Which you go for will depend mainly on what you plan on using a hose pipe for.
General use garden hoses
If you got to this post by Googling “what is the best water hose to buy” without a specific purpose in mind, this will be the best fit for you. An all-purpose garden hose is great for watering the garden, cleaning your car, filling a paddling pool, and almost any other household task you might need a hose pipe for. They come in a variety of sizes, strengths and thicknesses, with price ranges to match, so make sure to put some thought into how robust and long you need your general use garden hose to be.
Coiled garden hoses
Coiled hoses sit on a spool and can be retracted by simply winding a mechanism. They’re a great way to store your garden hose if space is at a premium. The tradeoff is that by their very nature, coiled hoses sometimes aren’t the longest or thickest, since they need to wrap around in a coil. However, it’s perfectly feasible to get a good size coiled hose pipe for a reasonable price that will suit your everyday needs.
Flat garden hoses
Flat hoses are the easiest to store in a small space but are often made from lighter materials. They expand when filled with water, but go back to being flat when out of use. Because they’re thinner, the longevity of flat garden hoses isn’t typically as high as other types of hose pipe.
Expandable garden hoses
Like flat hoses, expandable hose pipes increase in size when they have water running through them. The difference is that expandable garden hoses stretch lengthways too, often doubling or even tripling in size. They’re also made from relatively lightweight material, meaning they’re best used for light jobs.
Sprinkler garden hoses
These flat hose pipes have small holes on the top that sprays water out like a sprinkler.
What is the best garden hose on the market?
Answering this isn’t straightforward since it really depends on what you intend to use your garden hose for. However, we can make some recommendations for the most popular hose type. In this part of our hose pipe guide we’ll present three suggestions each for the three most popular hose pipe types.
Three of the best general use garden hose pipes
| Available in 15m, 30m and 50m lengths, the Gardena Comfort HighFLEX Hose is a great all-rounder if you’re looking for a robust-yet-flexible everyday hose pipe. In fact, Gardena is so sure about it, it even comes with a 25-year warranty! Clocking it around £20-£55 for respective sizes, it’s a quality garden hose at a quality price. |  |
| The Flopro+ Hose meanwhile is even tougher thanks to its four-layer construction, but will set you back a little more, with the 50m variant costing around £70. |  |
| Or if you’re after a general-purpose garden hose with a lot more length, the RHS Everflow has a 100m long option for those especially large gardens. Another big selling point is its namesake Everyflow technology that keeps water flowing even when the hose pipe becomes twisted, knotted or weighed down. It also has an even longer warranty than usual at 30 years. You do pay more for that price, however – if you can find one, the Everflow will set you back more than £90. |  |
Three of the best coiled garden hose pipes
| The Kärcher Compact Hose Box might be one of the tidiest-looking hose reels we’ve ever seen, and it even has its own wall mounting bracket as a bonus. It comes in the brand’s signature black and yellow, with a 10-metre hose and an additional 2-metre feeder hose to add a little extra reach. You can pick one up for around £47. |  |
| The Gardena Classic Hose Reel is ever so slightly pricier than the Kärcher at around £54, but the hose pipe is a little longer at 20m, giving you just that extra bit of garden coverage. The tradeoff is that the reel, while tidy, isn’t as compact or highly portable as the Kärcher. Between the two, it really depends on how important that ease of use is to you versus the size of your garden space. |  |
| Our final coiled garden hose is a bit of a curveball. The VonHaus Wall Mounted Garden Hose Reel is light, compact and comes with a 20m hose (longer ones are also available if you can find them), that retracts neatly into a wall-mounted box that makes the unit look a little like an oversized washing line. The VonHaus also has a 180° swivel that makes it a little more manageable. It’s the priciest of the three coiled garden hoses we’ve presented here though, costing around £90-£100. |  |
Three of the best expandable garden hose pipes
| Lightweight, tangle-free and able to expand from 10m resting size to 30m with the water on, the Hozelock Superhoze Expandable 30m hose pipe is a solid choice from a reliable brand. The one drawback is that being the premier expandable hose from market leader, it’s a little on the expensive side for something so relatively lightweight. You can expect to pay between £50-£70 for one depending on the time of the year. |  |
| One considerably more affordable alternative in the expandable hose field is the Flexi Hose. You can pick up the hose alone for a little over £25 for the 15m version with 23 metre and 30-metre options also available. The lifetime replacement guarantee is also attractive, and being made from 2mm thick latex, it’s also one of the lightest hoses around, with a corrugated appearance that’s guaranteed not to kink. All in all, a great option, for a fabulous price. |  |
| The final expandable hose in our hose pipe guide is also our budget option – but still a great one if you’re looking for a fine balance between size and weight. At 790 grams, the Homoze 50ft Expandable Garden Water Hose Pipe one of the lightest garden hoses you can find, and at just 5m long without water running through it it’s also one of the easiest to store – while it expands to six times that size at 30m once the water is on. Whilst the black is the most affordable at under £20, the blue looks especially great with our blue and grey Qwickhose® hose pipe attachments! |  |
The toughest garden hose
| As an added bonus, if you’re after a truly durable hose pipe, we’d say you can’t go wrong with the Hozelock Tuffhoze. This incredibly rugged ribbed hose pipe is made from a clever combination of textile and PVC is around 50% lighter than a traditional pipe. It’s also remarkably flexible given its durable construction, and comes in 12.5m, 25m and 35m variants, ranging from around £36 to £75. |  |
Are all garden hose connectors the same?
Until recently, standard hose fittings hadn’t changed much in decades. Plastic tooth-based connectors made connecting your garden hose to your outdoor tap, or to a spray nozzle accessory, fiddly and frustrating. It all meant many broken plastic teeth, and lots of wasted money spent on replacement fittings.
We designed the Qwickhose® range to change all that. Our patent-pending hose connector simply clamps down, twists shut, and stays put – allowing you to get on with using your hose pipe in peace.
The Qwickhose® Starter Set includes two hose connectors, one with a no-flow pin (one for each end of your garden hose) plus a tap connector and twist nozzle spay gun, along with a smart looking wall mount.
Picked the perfect hose pipe?
We hope our garden hose buyer’s guide has been helpful! Whichever new garden hose you go for, make sure you also pick up the Qwickhose® fittings you need to get the most out of it.
Learn more about Qwickhose® fittings here.
