Straight answers about carpet and rugs

Why we publish this

Carpet cleaning is a trade where the customer usually cannot evaluate the work. You watch someone run a machine over a floor, the floor looks better, and you have no way of knowing whether the soil was removed from the building or simply pushed deeper, whether detergent was rinsed out, or whether the carpet was over-wet in a way that will show up in three days. That information gap is why the industry has the reputation it has. These guides exist to close it. Every one of them contains something you can use to judge our work as well as anyone else’s.

The four things worth understanding

Cleaning frequency determines how long your carpet lasts, and almost everyone waits too long. Pet urine behaves in ways that make most of the products sold for it useless, because the problem is not where they are applied. Dry time is the single most reliable proxy for whether a job was done properly, and you can check it yourself with a towel. And fiber decides everything about how a rug can be treated — a process that is routine on wool destroys viscose. Those four topics cover most of what goes wrong in a house.

What these guides deliberately avoid

There are no miracle home remedies here, because the popular ones do not work and several cause permanent damage. Hydrogen peroxide lightens colored carpet. Ammonia-based cleaners smell like urine to a dog and encourage remarking. Optical brighteners in supermarket spotters leave patches that fluoresce differently from the surrounding carpet and cannot be removed. Baking soda leaves residue in the pile that is difficult to extract afterwards. We would rather tell you to blot with a white towel and cool water, which is unglamorous and correct.

Judging any cleaner in four checks

Press a folded white towel into the carpet with your foot when the work is finished: it should come up damp rather than wet, and it should not come up dirty. Two hours later, walk the traffic lanes in socks — they should feel cool rather than wet. Check the same lane the next morning for wicking, where a stain that had gone has reappeared at the surface, which means the carpet was over-wet and soil travelled back up as it dried. Finally, run a hand across a cleaned area and then an uncleaned one; the cleaned area should not feel tacky, because tackiness means detergent was left in the pile and the carpet will re-soil faster than it did before. None of those four checks require any knowledge of equipment, and between them they catch most of what goes wrong.

Questions worth asking before you book anyone

Ask whether the work is truck-mounted or portable, and why they use what they use — both have legitimate applications and a good answer will explain the trade-off rather than dismiss the question. Ask what the pre-spray is matched to and what the rinse is, because a cleaner who cannot describe a neutralizing rinse is probably not using one. Ask what they will not be able to remove, before they start; anyone who says everything will come out is either inexperienced or setting up an argument. Ask how long it will take to dry and hold them to it. And ask for the price in writing before work begins rather than after.

When to stop reading and call someone

Do not experiment on anything valuable, anything old, or anything you cannot replace. Do not experiment on silk or viscose at all. If a spill is large, if it is on a hand-knotted rug, or if it is red wine, coffee, blood or pet urine, blot it and stop — what happens in the first ten minutes matters more than anything a professional can do afterwards, and the most common way a recoverable spill becomes permanent is a homeowner reaching for the wrong bottle. Calling costs nothing and we will talk you through it on the phone whether or not you book.