In the first of a series of monthly columns, Stephen Treffinger, a writer specializing in design and products for the home, tests window cleaners.

He decided to wash glass in two settings. In the first, an Upper West Side apartment with unobstructed views, he sprayed 20 products or mixtures on the windows. In the second test, each of the cleaners was applied to a pane of glass and a pane of mirror spattered with toothpaste, hair gel and Pam cooking spray to simulate kitchen grease and bathroom buildup.

At issue were ease of use, efficacy, smell, wipeability and streaking. Nothing pleasant to use got high points if it couldn’t clean, and nothing that smelled awful could get high points.

FIRST, the good news. You really can have sparkly, streak-free windows. The bad? Unless you clean often or the glass isn’t that dirty, you’ll need more than a quick spray and wipe. Life is not a TV commercial. But with a product that suits you and a couple of accessories, it’s not that hard. And the results are very satisfying.

To find the best products, I tried about 20 – everything from supermarket standards to homemade elixirs.

Familiar, ammonia-based brands like Windex did an O.K. job, but the smell was overwhelming. I’m not a huge fan of ammonia. To some people it says “clean”; to me, it says “headache.” I also found these products evaporated too rapidly, which creates streaks if you don’t wipe fast enough.

Ammonia-free products often contain some type of plant-derived surfactant (i.e., detergent), so they do a good job of cutting through grease, though the soap factor can also mean they require a little more muscle to remove. Options for Life and Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Window Spray both performed well and left few streaks. The latter comes in a range of scents; I preferred the lemon verbena, which smells clean but not perfume-y.

Foams were new to me, but one called Sprayway proved to be a favorite. The best thing, aside from efficacy and beguiling scent, was that it stayed put after I sprayed it on, eliminating the race to wipe it off before it dripped. (It’s ammonia-free, too.) The challenge was to avoid applying too much product, which was easy to do. You don’t need to cover every inch of the glass, because it spreads as you wipe.

I tried several variations of a homemade white-vinegar-and-water mix, which did a good job at practically no cost. The one that proved most effective was one part vinegar to two parts of water. It was very runny, though, which meant I had to wipe quickly and vigorously with newspaper. A couple of tablespoons of rubbing alcohol added to the mix boosted its cleaning power and made it evaporate faster. If D.I.Y. isn’t your thing, Greenology makes an organic liquid that was the best of the vinegar-based commercial products.

Invisible Glass from Stoner, a company that specializes in automotive products, was especially good at removing soap film and bathroom gunk. It initially had a rubbing alcohol smell, but left behind no odor whatsoever.

I also put wiping materials to the test and found that I liked newspaper best by far. There was a slight learning curve – just how much should it be crumpled at the outset (a lot), just how wet should it get before it’s time for another sheet (not very) – but it did a first-rate job. Remember to wear rubber gloves or your hands will be black with ink.

Paper towels tended to leave streaks and sometimes fibers; recycled brands like Seventh Generation worked better, but you can burn through a couple on each window, which gets expensive.

The oft-touted “lint-free cloth” worked all right, but I found I preferred something with a little tooth, like very old terry, instead of the T-shirt material commonly available as “rags,” which just pushed the cleaner around.

Squeegees are great, but I never managed to get the technique down, and always found a pool of dirty suds at the bottom of the window.

You may now crumple me up.