Reviewed by Evan Lewis, PhD. Last updated August 2026.
How to disinfect shoes, honestly: you can't sterilise a shoe in a house, and the two methods with real evidence behind them are a 60 °C wash of everything removable and 48 hours of drying for the rest. In testing, a 40 °C wash left fungus alive. Freezing and tumble drying didn't kill it either.
Can you actually disinfect a shoe?
Not to any standard the word implies. A shoe is a layered object with foam, glue, fabric and stitching, and nothing you own reaches all of it at once.
What you can do is make a shoe a much worse place to live. That's a real and useful goal, and it's what the rest of this covers. A 2019 review of 33 studies on shoe and sock sanitisation going back to 1920 looked at boiling, chlorine, salts, UV and ozone, and concluded that newer methods look promising but need more research, while treating footwear as a genuine reinfection reservoir either way.
So: no perfect answer exists. Here's what does.
Which method has the strongest evidence?
A 60 °C wash. A 2022 study contaminated 180 cotton gauze pads with three Trichophyton species and ran them through domestic laundering. At 40 °C the fungus survived. At 60 °C and 90 °C it was removed.
The same study tested the things people assume work and found they don't. Heat drying in a domestic or laundromat machine failed to kill the dermatophytes. Freezing at −20 °C for 24 hours, 48 hours or a full week failed as well. Even direct 60 °C heat exposure for up to 90 minutes, without the wash, failed.
Read that carefully, because it's the crux of the whole article. It wasn't the heat on its own. It was 60 °C in a wash, with detergent and agitation carrying material away.
So the first job is working out how much of your shoe can go in a machine.
What comes out and goes in the wash?
Insoles, laces, removable liners, every sock you own, and canvas trainers if the label allows it.
- Insoles and footbeds. The wettest and most contaminated part of the shoe, and usually removable.
- Laces. Handled with fingers, never cleaned, take up no space.
- Removable liners, in skates, ski boots and some work boots.
- Every sock you own. If you do nothing else in this article, turn the sock wash up.
- Canvas trainers, whole, if the manufacturer allows it.
Check the care label before running anything at 60 °C. Some foam insoles will curl, and some cheap laces will shrink. That's the trade.
What do you do with the shoe body?
The part that can't be washed gets a different treatment: mechanical cleaning, then time and air.
- Empty it. Insole out, laces out, tongue forward. Tip out the grit.
- Brush the inside with a stiff brush over a bin. You're removing skin flakes, which is where the fungus travels, before you try to do anything else to the shoe.
- Wipe it out with a damp cloth and a little detergent, then wipe again with a clean damp cloth.
- Dry it properly. Somewhere warm, with moving air, open and unlaced. Not on a radiator, which distorts adhesives and shrinks leather. A boot dryer with a fan is ideal.
- Then leave it 48 hours. This is the step that only works if you own a second pair.
The NHS is direct about the rotation: do not wear the same pair of shoes for more than two to three days in a row, and do not wear shoes that make your feet hot and sweaty. Two pairs alternating is the cheapest fix in this article.
Can you spray Lysol or a disinfectant inside your shoes?
People do, and the honest answer has two halves.
Surface disinfectants are validated on hard, non-porous surfaces with a stated contact time, usually several minutes of the surface staying visibly wet. A shoe lining is porous fabric over foam. It absorbs the spray immediately, so the contact time the label depends on doesn't happen, and the product never reaches the material below the surface.
It also doesn't remove anything. Debris stays where it was. If you're going to use a disinfectant spray, brush the shoe out first, follow the label, and don't expect it to do more than treat the surface it can actually wet.
Do the freezer, the dryer and sunshine work?
Not on their own, and two of the three have been tested directly.
The freezer. The most repeated tip online, and the study above tested it directly. A week at −20 °C and everything grew back. Domestic freezing pauses microbial life, it doesn't end it.
The tumble dryer. Also tested, also ineffective on its own. It's useful for finishing a 60 °C wash, not for replacing one.
Sunlight. No controlled data on shoes, and there's a plausible mechanism in the UV plus the drying. Treat it as a free bonus to airing them out, not as a method.
UV and ozone shoe devices. These appear in the 2019 review as promising and under-evidenced. Light also needs line of sight, and the inside of a shoe is mostly shadow. If you buy one, buy it knowing that.
Leather boots and work boots
Same principles, more care with the material.
Don't soak leather. Don't put it near direct heat. Do pull the insole every single night, do open the boot fully so the inside is exposed to air, and do own a second pair if you're in them all day. Twelve hours in a steel-toe boot creates exactly the warm sealed damp that this whole problem depends on, and we've written that up separately.
How do you disinfect running, gym and climbing shoes?
The same way as anything else, with one constraint: none of the three survives a 60 °C wash, so the removable parts have to carry the whole job.
Running and gym shoes. Mesh uppers and foam midsoles distort in hot water and the adhesive lets go. Pull the insole and the laces and run those at 60 °C, brush the inside out over a bin, then rest the pair 48 hours. Gym shoes earn the rotation more than anything else you own, because they go on damp feet and come off wetter.
Climbing shoes. Worn without socks, which is most of the problem. They cannot go through a hot wash without wrecking the rand, so the routine shifts: take them off between routes instead of walking around in them, dry them open with moving air rather than heat, alternate two pairs if you climb often, and put the daily effort into the foot rather than the shoe.
Socks are the part people skip when they set out to disinfect shoes and socks together. The shoe is the hard half and the sock is the easy one, so run every sock you own at 60 °C rather than sorting them.
Secondhand and thrifted shoes
Worth doing properly, and easy to overdo.
Bin the old insoles and buy new ones. That single step removes the most contaminated component. Then wash the laces, brush and wipe the interior, and air the shoes for a few days before wearing them. Fungus has been recovered from the surfaces of slippers, sandals and socks, so treating used footwear as worth cleaning is reasonable.
What about after athlete's foot, specifically?
This is the situation most people are actually in when they search this.
The 2019 review notes that patients who cleared an infection can be reinfected from an untreated shoe, sock or textile, and puts recurrence and relapse rates for these infections at 10% to 53%. So doing the shoes at the point the skin clears is worth more than doing them at any other moment.
New insoles, socks at 60 °C, both pairs cleaned and rested, and the routine kept going after the skin looks normal. If it has already come back more than once, the recurrence article works through the six places it hides.
What is the step when the shoes go back on?
Something on the foot itself. Everything above is about the shoe when it's empty. The rest of the time the shoe has a foot in it, and that's where most of the material comes from in the first place.
That's the gap Sole Shield was built for. Two ingredients, aqueous iodine and distilled water, sprayed on the feet and into the shoes at the end of the day. It's a daily step rather than a deep clean, and it goes where a wash cycle can't, which is a shoe you're still wearing.
Two things worth knowing before you buy any iodine product for this. Pharmacy "decolorized iodine" is not the mild option it sounds like. The FDA-registered label lists 45% alcohol and warns that it will stain skin and clothing. Ours is water-based with no alcohol in it, so it doesn't sting split skin and it won't mark a white trainer or a pale sock.
Common questions
How do you disinfect shoes at home?
Remove the insoles and laces and wash them at 60 degrees Celsius, since 40 degrees left fungus alive in testing. Brush and wipe out the shoe body, dry it fully with moving air rather than heat, and rest it 48 hours before wearing again. A whole shoe cannot be sterilised at home.
Does freezing shoes kill fungus?
No. Contaminated pads frozen at minus 20 degrees Celsius for 24 hours, 48 hours and a full week all grew back within days in a 2022 study. Domestic freezing suspends microbial activity rather than ending it, so the problem returns once the shoes warm up.
What temperature kills fungus in a washing machine?
60 degrees Celsius and above. In testing on 180 contaminated cotton pads, 60 and 90 degrees removed dermatophyte conidia and 40 degrees did not. Direct heat at 60 degrees without a wash cycle also failed, so it is the wash rather than the temperature alone that does the work.
Can you spray Lysol inside your shoes?
You can, and expect less than the label implies. Surface disinfectants are validated on hard non-porous surfaces with a contact time that keeps them visibly wet. Shoe linings absorb spray immediately, so the required contact time never happens and the material under the surface is not reached.
How do you disinfect shoes after athlete's foot?
Replace the insoles, wash laces and all socks at 60 degrees Celsius, brush and wipe the interior, and rest each pair 48 hours by alternating between two. Reviews of shoe sanitisation identify an untreated shoe or sock as a specific reinfection route, so doing this as the skin clears matters most.
How do you clean secondhand shoes?
Throw out the original insoles and fit new ones, since the insole is the most contaminated part. Wash the laces hot, brush and wipe the interior, and air the shoes for several days before wearing. Fungus has been recovered from the surfaces of slippers, sandals and socks.
Do UV shoe sanitisers work?
The evidence is thin. A 2019 review of 33 studies described UV and light-based technologies as promising and in need of further research. Light also needs line of sight, and much of a shoe's interior is shadowed, so treat these devices as a supplement to washing and drying rather than a replacement.
How do you disinfect shoes from ringworm?
The same way you would for athlete's foot, because it is the same family of organism. Ringworm on the body and tinea pedis on the foot are both dermatophyte infections, which is why the 2022 laundering study used Trichophyton species. Wash everything removable at 60 degrees Celsius, brush and wipe the shoe body, dry it with moving air, and rest it 48 hours.
How do you disinfect shoes from warts?
Different organism, so the shoe matters less than it does for fungus. Plantar warts come from HPV rather than a fungus, and DermNet describes them spreading by direct skin-to-skin contact or by autoinoculation when a wart is scratched or picked. Cleaning the shoe is still reasonable, but the habits that count more are not going barefoot on shared wet floors, keeping the wart covered, and not sharing towels, files or pumice.
The bottom line
Two things have real evidence: a 60 °C wash, and 48 hours of drying.
Everything else is either unproven, unreachable inside a shoe, or aimed at the smell rather than the cause. Wash what comes out. Brush, wipe, dry and rest what doesn't. Then own a second pair.
For the survival figures behind all of it, see how long fungus lives on floors, shoes and towels. If the problem is odour rather than fungus, why shoes smell covers the different mechanism behind it.
Evan Lewis, PhD, specializes in natural and nutritional therapies for the prevention and management of chronic diseases and their complications. His research spans chronic disease, diabetes complications, clinical nutrition, and nerve health, including the development of topical iodine therapy for foot care and wound health. IodinePure products are listed with Health Canada as cosmetics. This article is general information, not a diagnosis.
Sources: Akhoundi M, Nasrallah J, Marteau A, Chebbah D, Izri A, Brun S. Effect of Household Laundering, Heat Drying, and Freezing on the Survival of Dermatophyte Conidia. J Fungi (Basel). 2022;8(5):546. Gupta AK, Versteeg SG. The Role of Shoe and Sock Sanitization in the Management of Superficial Fungal Infections of the Feet. J Am Podiatr Med Assoc. 2019;109(2):141-149. Jazdarehee A, et al. Transmission of Onychomycosis and Dermatophytosis between Household Members: A Scoping Review. J Fungi (Basel). 2022;8(1):60. NHS, Athlete's foot. DailyMed, Decolorized Iodine label. DermNet, Viral warts.
