14th Feb 2023

It was a fairly common job in Lichfield today. A man made polypropylene carpet in the usual dark grey which is very on trend at the moment. The clients had a long haired dog, so we found that those water proofing oils from it’s coat had transferred to the carpet giving it a slight brown tinge. We see this all the time, but as the carpet is of a man made fibre (which is not absorbent) we were able to restore the colour without too much difficulty using our product SPM which has brighteners within it and strips the oils very well indeed.

The other part of the job was not so easy, a 100% wool rug which had white wine spritzer spilt on it. If we had got there before any home cleaning was attempted on it, I’m sure we would have been able to reduce it significantly. However, as the client had used an over the counter spotter (one of the usual suspects) it had unfortunately been bleached by that product causing permanent colour damage, leaving a slight yellowing to the fabric and had actually made the stain far larger than it originally was. We flushed that detergent out to eliminate any further issues and using specialist products reduced the yellowing to a more acceptable appearance. It is a shame as it is something we see done to very expensive wool carpets so often. Because of the way in which they are dyed, it becomes very easy to bleach the colour out. Though one thing the client did perfectly was only dab the stain rather than scrub. Wool carpets shed fibres throughout their life and so when treating a uniform patterned loop pile carpet and wool carpets in general, scrubbing them releases so many fibres that it creates a haze of fluff above it. This haze then creates a break in the pattern which draws your eyes straight to it, emphasizing the stain to a greater degree.

It was a shame we didn’t get to the rug sooner, but I am very happy the client avoided this pit fall of scrubbing!