Carpet stains and spills

Accidents do happen, and when it comes to carpets and rugs, spills occur more often than not, no matter how much precaution we take. This does not mean though that you should forget about protecting your carpet, it only means that spills will happen at some point in your carpet’s life, one way or another.

It must be noted that carpets are made of fibers, and more often than not, these fibers are all absorbent – whether it is wool, cotton, shag, even synthetic fibers – all absorb liquid though to a varying degree. In general though, it only takes a matter seconds for all types of liquid to seep into those fibers, and form those unsightly stains that we often see after a spill.

In the case of water, there isn’t really much need to worry about stains, especially if you have dark colored carpets, since the water marks that it leaves behind are barely noticeable against the dark colored fibers. However, if your carpet is of a lovely white shade, then this water marks are bound to leave yellowish stains which will make your white carpet look dirty as they dry up.

Colored liquid though, is an altogether different story, because whether you have colored or white carpets, stains will almost always form after a spill. We say almost always because if you’re lucky, you will spill colored liquid which is the same color as your carpet (for instance, black nail polish on a black carpet), where the stains barely make any difference. However, this does not mean that you can be careless and ignore the spill. Even in this cases, it is still best to clean the carpet immediately after the spill, in order to avoid the unwanted side effects like foul odors (in case of pet urine or pungent sauces) and icky feeling as you walk on the carpet (usually caused by the hardening oils and pigments usually found in oily and greasy liquid like barbeque sauce).

Thus, in order to avoid all these headaches, the best course of action to act quickly and get rid of those spills as soon as you possibly can. Spills and stains are best and easiest to treat and remove while they are still wet, and the longer you let them sit on your carpet, the more difficult it will be to get rid of them.