The Ultimate Guide For Caring For Your Carpets

Carpets and flooring are focal points in your home.

Clean carpets create a great impression and give a home a fresh and uplifting feel.

Grubby carpets have the complete opposite effect, creating a cluttered and unhygienic impression.

Whilst all carpets age from the moment they are laid, there are some key steps you can take to maintain their fresh and clean appearance and help them last for many years to come.

Remove your shoes

The quickest way to prematurely age your carpets and cause soiling and wear is to walk over them with your shoes on.

Outdoor footwear traps dirt in the treads and deposits it onto carpet. This dirt will then act as an abrasive agent to the carpet fibres causing them to wear down and lose their original springy quality.

Use exterior and interior entrance mats

If you don’t have a porch in which you can remove your shoes then entrance mats work effectively to help remove soiling from your shoes before removing them.

Vacuum your carpets regularly

Every time you walk on a carpet you are transferring fine particles of dust and dirt onto the carpet fibres.

This debris will quickly degrade your carpet fibres as well as making them look grubby over time.

If you have children or pets you may need to vacuum thoroughly on a daily basis. Even if you live alone, we still recommend vacuuming a couple of times per week.

It can make a huge difference in how your carpets will look years down the line.

Invest in professional carpet cleaning

An annual professional carpet clean will retain the inviting appearance of your carpets and help them last for several years longer than if you were to neglect having them professionally cleaned.

While vacuuming will remove some of the dirt and debris from the fibres, a professional clean will clean deep down into the base and also remove any stains before they become permanent.

But which method of carpet cleaning should you choose?

The best choice for the vast majority of carpets is the hot water extraction (HWE) method of carpet cleaning.

Unlike low moisture cleaning, HWE uses moisture, pressure and heat to thoroughly clean deep into the fibres, removing fine dust particles and potential allergens such as dust mites.

And if the machine used is of sufficient quality and power, the results are far superior to other methods of carpet cleaning.

Don’t hire a carpet cleaning machine

Hiring one of the typical supermarket rental machines often proves to be a disaster. The usual issue is over-wetting the carpet, making it extremely difficult to then extract that excess moisture with an underpowered vacuum system.

These machines are simply not fit for purpose and can cause irreparable damage.

Tackle any spillages immediately

If you’re able to treat stains yourself as soon as they occur then you’ll usually be able to prevent permanent damage.

Here’s how you should tackle a spillage:

1. Act quickly. At first it’s a spillage, and not yet a stain.
2. Using a white towel or kitchen roll, press all your weight on the stain, blotting up as much as possible. This may take a few minutes but is worth the patience.
3. Check to see if much of the stain has been transferred to the towel or kitchen roll and replace with a clean one as often as necessary. Do not be tempted to rub or scrub the stain.
4. Once no more colour is being transferred, dab a clean towel with a small amount of water and continue blotting the stain for  few minutes.
5. Now place another clean dry towel over the stain and weigh it down with something reasonably heavy for several hours.
6. Assess the stain and if any colour remains, call a professional carpet cleaner.

We hope these tips have been helpful

If you’d like more information about the cleaning services we offer in South Wales and Bristol, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.