Looking for the best mower with a rear roller for a beautifully striped lawn?
In this guide, I’ve discussed the best types of mowers for creating lawn stripes, so you can spend your money wisely on the most capable mower for your needs.
✅ Key Takeaways:
The best mower types for lawn stripes are any mowers that have a heavy, sturdy rear roller.
Electric mowers, petrol mowers, and manual mowers may all come with a built-in rear for creating a striped lawn appearance.
Some features to look for in the best lawn mower for lawn stripes are a sturdy roller, a split-roller design, and multiple cut heights.
Table of Contents
❓ Which Mowers Are Best For A Striped Lawn?
I recommend two mower types as my top picks for a striped lawn: corded electric mowers (if you have a smaller garden) and petrol mowers (for larger lawns).
Petrol mowers tend to be the very best at creating stripes because they’re weightier and have sturdier, better-built rear rollers that create bolder stripes in just one mow. However, these mowers aren’t the most convenient choice for a small garden because they’re loud, more expensive, and more difficult to use and maintain than electric mowers.
Not every electric mower or petrol mower is guaranteed to come with a roller. Regardless of the type of mower you choose, make sure it has a built-in roller, since this is the device that flattens your grass and creates stripes as you mow.
While I think that electric and petrol lawn mowers are great mower types for a striped lawn, they’re not the only option – and depending on your personal situation, you might prefer a different mower.
I’ve shared all the mower types that can be found with a rear roller in the below section.
- Brand: Hyundai
Price: ££
Power source: Petrol
Cutting width: 43cm
Cut height range: 25-75mm
Weight: 41 kilograms
Grass box capacity: 45 litres
Dimensions (DxWxH): 103 x 48 x 130cm
Power: 139cc
⭐️ Best Mower Types For Creating Lawn Stripes
Here you’ll find my top recommended mowers for creating lawn stripes.
🔌 Electric Corded Mowers
I think corded electric lawn mowers with a rear roller are the best affordable lawn mowers for quickly and effortlessly creating stripes in a small space. They’re designed for fast and easy use, and should be capable and powerful enough for most lawn maintenance jobs.
These mowers are ideally suited for small-to-medium lawns because they’re lightweight and affordable, costing as little as £75 upfront.
You can use a corded electric mower with a roller to quickly mow stripes into your lawn. You’ll just have to watch out for the power cord, which you might have to keep moving so you can continue to mow in back-and-forth straight lines without running it over.
🛢 Petrol Mowers
Petrol lawnmowers with a rear roller are my top recommended mowers for creating lawn stripes in a larger lawn.
These mowers are best for large lawns because they’re powerful and fast, and they’re not restricted by a power cord, so you can mow across your entire lawn without having to think about extension leads.
They also tend to have the advantage of a sturdier, better-quality roller, with extra features (like a split roller design or ribbed material) that provide additional benefits like better grip, easier turning, and more effective edge mowing.
Petrol mowers are the most expensive mower types with rollers for domestic use that you’ll probably come across. The price of a petrol lawn mower starts at around £250-£300 for the smallest model.
🔋 Cordless (Battery-Operated) Mowers
Cordless mowers are another mower type that you can sometimes find with a built-in roller.
These mowers use a rechargeable battery rather than a power cord or a petrol engine. That makes them a good choice for small lawns because they don’t have the hassle of a cord, but they’re also not as quick or as powerful as petrol mowers, and they have a limited battery life (around 30 minutes).
Cordless mowers are a great alternative to electric lawn mowers, and they tend to have the same roller design. Expect to pay slightly more upfront for this mower than you would for an electric model – the expensive battery brings the upfront cost to around £225-£275 on average.
💪 Manual Mowers
Finally, some of the more thoughtfully-designed manual mowers also feature a rear roller.
Manual mowers are push-powered, so they give you the opportunity to get in some physical exercise while you mow your lawn.
These mowers are lightweight, so they should only be used to create stripes on flat lawns. If your lawn is uneven, a manual mower will bounce over the bumps as you mow, so the roller won’t be able to flatten grass in one smooth line, and there will likely be missed patches.
A manual mower typically uses cylinder blades, which produce a neater, cleaner cut than a conventional rotary mower – another plus point for creating neat, standout stripes.
You can buy a manual mower with a rear roller for as little as £60-£70.
📡 Features To Look For In A Mower For Lawn Stripes
Here are some of the features that you should look for in the best lawn mower for stripes:
🔨 Sturdy Roller
A sturdy roller is the most important feature of a mower if you want to achieve a perfectly striped lawn.
First off, a mower will only create stripes if it has a rear roller. So, a roller of some form is a must.
The roller design itself will determine the boldness and clarity of the stripes. If you want to achieve clearly defined stripes after just one mow, you need a mower with a sturdy, weighty roller.
Mowers with lightweight, flimsier rollers will still create stripes, but you’ll probably have to go over the same path multiple times before you notice defined results.
I’ve found that petrol lawn mowers tend to have the sturdiest, weightiest rollers and produce the best stripes in just a single mowing session.
🔘 Split-Roller Design
If a mower has a split-roller design, it means the rear roller is split into two separate rollers that sit side-by-side, rather than having one long roller that covers the entire width of the cutting deck.
A split-roller design is a big benefit of a lawn mower for creating stripes because it makes turning the mower easier and makes it possible to mow right up to your lawn edges without scalping your borders.
You’re most likely to find a split roller on a petrol lawn mower. A manual or electric lawnmower will likely have a standard single roller, which will still work, but won’t be quite as tailored to manoeuvrability and edge-cutting.
🚧 Ribbed Roller
You’ll also come across a few lawn mower types that have a ribbed roller.
The benefit of a ribbed rear roller is that it offers extra grip, which provides stability when mowing lawn edges.
The ribbed nature of the roller also protects the grass and prevents turf marking when you’re turning, so it’ll help you to achieve the cleanest, greenest stripes possible.
Again, you’re most likely to find a ribbed rear roller on a petrol lawn mower – not your average electric rotary mower.
✂️ Multiple Cutting Heights
Finally, a lawn mower for creating stripes should have at least three adjustable cutting heights, so you can achieve the optimal height of cut for showcasing bold, defined stripes.
A cut height of 30mm should allow you to achieve the boldest lawn stripes. Any longer than this and the stripes might have a “messy” look, and any shorter and the stripes won’t be quite as defined because you’re working with less grass.
Most mowers have at least five cut heights, and some even have seven, so you can tailor your cut to your exact preferences.
🤷♂️ Are Cylinder Or Rotary Mowers Best For Creating Stripes?
Cylinder and rotary mowers can both be used for creating a striped lawn appearance – as long as they have a rear roller.
Not all rotary mowers produce a striped lawn appearance. You specifically need a rear roller mower with a rotary blade.
The same goes for cylinder mowers – only those with a rear roller are capable of creating stripes.
Is a cylinder mower or a rotary mower better for mowing stripes on your lawn?
There’s no real difference – you’ll get virtually the same results from either mower.
Cylinder mowers are better for achieving a closely-cropped, ornamental look, so the stripes produced by a cylinder rear roller lawnmower may be less defined due to the shortness of the grass.
However, it depends on how short you go. You can still get a great stripe from a cylinder mower – sometimes even better, due to this mower’s ability to create a crisp, uniform line and a clean cut, which
🤖 Do Robot Mowers Create Stripes?
No, robot mowers don’t create stripes – or, at least, I haven’t come across a robot mower with a rear roller for domestic use just yet.
The issue with most robot mowers is that they don’t mow in straight lines. Instead, they tend to mow in random patterns, turning every time they meet an obstacle or an edge and heading off in another direction. They’ll continue until they’ve mowed every part of your garden at least once, so the end result looks great – but not if you want lawn stripes.
Imagine if you put a rear roller on a robot mower that moved in a random pattern. You’d end up with stripes in all directions all over your lawn, and the mower would probably go back over the same route in the opposite direction a few times, causing the grass to get flattened in all directions.
There are systematic robot mowers that are better at mowing in an ordered system, but even these don’t guarantee the neatness and preciseness of an actual human mowing in back-and-forth lines from one end of the lawn to the other.
I’m sure one day there will be robot mowers with a roller that can mow in ordered lines and create beautiful stripes, but that day is yet to come.
🏁 Final Word
Hopefully this guide has given you the knowledge to choose the best lawn mower for creating those oh-so-satisfying lawn stripes.
When it comes down to it, all you need to achieve a striped lawn is a mower with a roller.
If you’re ready to start shopping and want to see a selection of the best lawn mowers with rear rollers available today, check out our guide to the best lawn mowers for lawn stripes.
Thanks for reading, and happy mowing!