If your carpet is looking a little dingy and you decide to have it professionally steam cleaned, you might be surprised when the stains come back after a few months of use. This can be especially frustrating if the stains were gone when the affordable carpet cleaning geelong experts left them! I’ll go over why this happens and how to prevent it from happening with your carpets.
Wicking
Because carpets are soft and absorbent, they can retain stains. A stain is a mark left on fabric by some type of spill or accident, like food or drink spills. If you steam clean your carpet, it will take out many kinds of stains.
But if the stain is deep in your carpet’s fibres, it will still be there after the steam cleaning has finished. So if your carpet has been stained before, there’s no guarantee that all stains will be removed by using a professional, affordable carpet cleaning geelong service.
If you want to remove all possible stains from your entire home’s flooring, then invest in an area rug instead! Area rugs are not as soft as wall-to-wall carpeting and do not wick liquids away from spills like wall-to-wall does; therefore, any spilled liquid that comes into contact with an area rug stays where it lands until you clean up afterward (or leave dry).
How do carpets “wick” stains?
Carpets are made of loops. Loops of yarn, that is. The carpet’s loops are sewn together to create the carpet and they absorb liquid like a sponge. When a spill occurs on your carpet, it gets absorbed into the loops of yarn and wicks up to the surface where you can clean it up with soap, water or other cleaning products.
If you steam clean your carpet often enough, however (at least once every three months), this may be all that is needed for some stains because steam cleaning does not remove dirt from the bottom layer of fibres in your rug!
It works by applying heat from above; this heats up both dirt AND moisture within each fibre, so when you “wet vacuum” after steaming (meaning using your machine’s suction feature), all that remains is dry dust and no more stain!
How to prevent and clean a “wicking” stain?
The next time you have a carpet stain, first remove as much of it as possible. Use a towel or rag to blot up the stain, and then apply a carpet cleaner. If there is still some kind of residue left over after this step, try using a carpet shampooer to get rid of it.
Otherwise, it’s time to move on to more powerful methods: applying a carpet stain remover directly onto the affected area should do the trick!
Conclusion
So, what does this mean for your carpet? The bottom line is that it’s important to know the difference between stains and spots, as well as how they can affect your home. If you try to clean a spot without understanding the full nature of it, you could end up making matters worse.
In other words: if there’s any stain on your carpet that seems like it needs special attention, call us! We’ll give your rug or rug-like surface an expert cleaning treatment so it looks brand new again.
