Your morning brew is likely a sacred ritual. It helps usher you into consciousness and gets you ready for the day, plus it tastes good. What’s not so great is whenever there’s a mishap or a bit too much eagerness to drink over a clean carpet. This leads to a rather dark and unsightly stain on that carpet, especially if it’s light-colored.
You might be wondering how to get coffee stains out of the carpet, but the good news is that it isn’t much different from getting up other stains. Odds are, you’re not going to be able to get the stain up instantly if you’re in a rush to go to work.
Cleaning with Dish Detergent
The stain is likely to be dried by the time you get to it, so you’ll need to moisten it up and loosen the coffee molecules from your carpet fibers. You can use carpet cleaning solutions for that, but if you don’t have any then simple solutions made of cleaning supplies will do just as well. The most straightforward method for cleaning up coffee stains with DIY treatment is to use dish soap. It works best with most carpet colors.
Squeeze a small amount of dish detergent onto the stain, then pour cold water on it. Next, use a scrubbing brush to combine the detergent and water into a lather; this lather acts as a lifting agent to pull the coffee out of the rug.
Continue scrubbing the rug until you don’t see the stain anymore. It may take several applications of detergent and water, as well as rinsing out the brush. Also, you should scrub gently from the outside to the center to keep the stain concentrated in a single place on the carpet. If the stain is small or if you don’t have a full-sized scrub brush, you can use an old toothbrush.
Finally, wipe the carpet clean with a towel. The remaining stain should come up if you’ve cleaned properly up to this point.
Cleaning with Hydrogen Peroxide
Hydrogen peroxide has naturally absorbent properties, which makes it an excellent cleaning agent. If you’re cleaning a rug of lighter colors, peroxide’s bleaching effect may be helpful. You don’t need a lot of it. In fact, just a tablespoon of it combined with dish detergent, rather than water, may be more effective than using water and dish detergent. Avoid using peroxide on dark rugs because it may ruin the color.
After about five minutes, mop the entire area up with paper towels. This should pull up both the cleaning mixture and the stain.
Old Stains
Dealing with an older coffee stain is much the same as cleaning a fresh one. The stain doesn’t undergo any real chemical changes, but it does need to be moistened again. Hot water works well; heat loosens bonded material and will make it easier to clean. Moisten it several times and then use the previous methods to clean. There should be no problem
Creamer
We’ve been telling you how to clean black coffee stains until now. If you use creamer or milk, it’s a little trickier. Dairy products like milk contain protein, which decomposes and gives off a foul odor. You need to use an enzymatic commercial cleaner to break up the proteins.
Examples include:
- Nature’s Miracle (also useful for pet stains)
- OxiClean
- Ultrazyme Enzymatic Cleaner
Precautions
We don’t like recommending heavy chemicals for carpet cleaning because they can cause damage to the environment. Not only that, but strong industrial cleaners can damage certain materials like wool, wool blends, or organic fibers. If you have doubts, it’s a good idea to check with your carpet’s manufacturer to find out what chemicals are safe.
Alternative Methods
You may have a few other options that work well for coffee stains. Lemon juice and white vinegar are chief among these.
Carpet Shampooers
Do you often spill coffee on your carpet? See our list of top home carpet cleaners that can take care of the mess for you fast and easy.
For spot cleaning, like removing coffee stains, you might want to go for a high quality portable carpet cleaner. They are lightweight, cheap, and very effective against stains. A real time saver if you have kids, pets or often spill on your carpet or rug.
Conclusion
Removing coffee stains from carpet is relatively simple most of the time; it just requires a little elbow grease and quick action. The only time you should need to take any special precautions is if you have organic carpet or spilled creamer. Mild chemicals like dish detergent tend to work the best and are the least expensive.
