How To Get Tough Stains Out of Carpets

It’s every home-owners nightmare: a glass of red wine spilled across their beautiful cream carpet. Stains on carpets can be very hard to remove, and there is no end to old wives’ tales about salt, using water, not using water and so on.

Although there is no one way of treating every stain, it’s worthwhile learning how to deal with the most common stains so that if that glass of red wine is spilled, you’ll know what to do about it.

General Principles

Although there are no miracle solutions which will work on every single stain, there are some general principles to bear in mind.

Firstly, take action promptly. The longer you leave the stain, the harder it will be to treat. If the spill is liquid such as blood, coffee or red wine, use kitchen paper to soak up as much of the liquid as you can right away. Don’t scrub at the stain; just blot up as much of the excess as you can. It’s also a good idea to keep a stock of stain removing sprays or powder in the cupboard.

Red Wine

Wine is one of the hardest stains to deal with, and time is of the essence it dealing with it. Get to work with the kitchen paper blotting up as much as you can, and forget the story about pouring white wine on the top.

Sparkling water or soda water does the job far better, so treat the affected area with the water, blot again, and repeat the process until the stain is gone. Once you have got the majority of the stain out, treat the area with carpet shampoo to remove any last traces.

Failing that, try this:

Blood

If you have children, or are just particularly accident prone, drips of blood on the carpet are more common than you may think. Washing up liquid is good at getting blood out of your carpet, so mix one tablespoon of washing up liquid with two cups of cold water, and use an old toothbrush to work it into the stain. Keep blotting the carpet and repeating the process.

If there is still a stain once you have repeated the process several times, use a solution of ammonia. Ammonia is available in DIY and traditional ironmonger shops, but needs to be used with caution.

Just a note that it's best to put on gloves before you start dealing with blood stains, but you'd be safer to wear gloves when dealing with any stains on this list anyway.

Mud

The one exception to the “act quickly” rule is mud. If someone has trampled mud over your white carpets, then let the mud dry before trying to remove it. Once it has completely dried up, try to vacuum up as much as possible.

If there is still some mud left, mix up some washing up liquid or washing machine detergent with water, and sponge it onto the stain. Blot up the muddy liquid and repeat the process as often as you need to in order to remove the stain.

Nail Varnish

Again, start by blotting up as much of the spilled nail varnish as you can with some paper towels, kitchen paper or even loo roll. Then use tiny amounts of acetone nail varnish remover to blot onto the stain and remove the polish; the easiest way to do this is with a dropper or pipette. Acetone can react with some artificial fibres and cause them to melt, so take care if your carpet is not pure wool.

Apparently hair gel also works. Let us know if you successfully manage to give this one a try!

Nail varnish is one of the hardest stains to remove, and if you regularly have a problem with spilled nail varnish, have a specialist removal product on standby.

General Staining

If you have moved into a property where the carpets have more general old staining, it can be tempting to rip all of the carpets out and fit new ones. Before taking that step, getting the professionals in to clean your carpets can be well worth the expense. It will cost around £500 to get the carpets professionally cleaned in the average three bedroom house, and if you want to do the work yourself, carpet cleaning machine hire is about £40 for 24 hours.

Deep cleaning the carpets with detergent and steam can give them a whole new lease of life and may allow you to put the expense of replacing them off until later.