Just spilled something? Press a white towel onto it with a little cold water and keep the supermarket foam in the cupboard. The marks that beat us are very often ones somebody scrubbed or sprayed first.
Order of work
We do not treat stains in isolation. The room gets its ordinary clean first, and a fair amount of what looked like staining turns out to be plain soil that lifts along with everything else. Only then do we go back round, mark by mark, choosing the product to suit: tannin spotter on tea and coffee, an enzyme on food or blood, a solvent gel on grease or make-up. A mild acid rinse finishes the job so no sticky residue stays in the fibres to pull dirt back in.
Marks that usually go
Tea, coffee, beer, mud, most food and fresh red wine all respond well, as does the grey path worn down the middle of a hallway. Blood comes out best with cold water, since heat cooks it into the fibre. Pet urine responds to an enzyme, though once it has reached the underlay a clean from above only goes so far. Candle wax takes patience: we lift what we can with brown paper and a warm iron before any chemistry goes on, then treat the colour the wax leaves behind.
Marks that usually stay
Bleach strips dye, and so do acne creams containing benzoyl peroxide, which leave pale orange or white patches. With the colour gone there is nothing for a cleaner to remove. Hair dye, turmeric and red wine that someone has already steamed usually leave a trace. Rust from a plant pot or a metal chair leg often lightens and leaves a shadow. Before we treat anything, we tell you which group your mark seems to belong to.
Cost
Ordinary spots come with the room, so a bedroom with a few marks costs £36 just like one without. Heavy spotting across a whole room, after a party or a leaking bin bag, gets priced before we start, so the bill at the end holds no surprise.
| Service | Price |
|---|---|
| Bedroom | £36 |
| Living room | £43 |
| Through lounge | £61 |
| Stairs, per flight | £41 |
| Rug up to 3m² | £35 |
| Rug over 3m² | £51 |
| Bedroom, with a move-out clean | £29 |
| Living room, with a move-out clean | £36 |
| Stairs, with a move-out clean | £35 |
In Ealing homes
Cream and oatmeal wool is common in the older W5 houses, and it shows every spill, though wool also lets go of most stains well if nobody has scrubbed at it. Ealing’s hard water can leave a faint white ring where a water spill or an overflowing plant pot has dried on pale carpet; that ring is mineral and usually rinses out. In the let flats near Ealing Broadway station, check-out marks tend to be coffee beside the sofa and foundation near a mirror, and both come out well while they are fresh.
The rest of the process is on our carpet cleaning page. For a mark on fabric see sofa and chair cleaning, and for one on a rug, rug cleaning.
Questions we get asked
Our dog was sick on the stairs last night. Should I clean it up before you arrive?
Scoop up the solid part with a spoon or a bit of card, then dab with cold water. No hot water and no bleach. Let it dry and leave the rest to us; an enzyme treatment works better on a mark that has not been soaked in washing-up liquid.
Is one stain worth a visit?
A visit for a single mark is charged at the £67 minimum. If the room is being cleaned anyway, the stain is part of the room price, so a stained living room is £43 like any other.
Can you get nail varnish out?
Sometimes. It depends on the fibre, because the solvents that dissolve varnish can also damage some synthetic carpets. We test on a hidden patch first, and the odds are better on wool than on polypropylene.
A mark has reappeared a day after the clean. Why?
That is wicking. The spill soaked into the backing or the underlay, and as the carpet dried the colour travelled back up the fibres. Lay a folded white towel over it with a heavy book on top overnight, and most of it transfers into the towel.