5 Great Odour Killing Tips for Carpets

A foul odour coming from your carpet is sure to turn away guests and to make your home an unwelcoming place instead of a comfortable refuge from the daily grind. If you can’t recall a stain or a spill from six months ago, don’t worry, your carpet will remind you with an unpleasant smell.

How can one remove bad odours from a carpet? Plenty of over-the-counter commercial carpet cleaning products claim that they can eliminate all odours with a quick spray, but seldom is that actually effective at treating the source of the odour.

Here are some great odour killing tips for carpets:

Many commercially-available cleaning products do an excellent job of masking the smell, but they are seldom as effective as neutralising it altogether. Start by vacuuming all of your carpeted areas, then apply a generous amount of baking soda to the carpet such that a powdery layer coats the carpet. A sifter can help to distribute the baking soda more evenly. Leave the baking soda for at least two hours to absorb the odours. Better yet, apply overnight and vacuum in the morning so that it’s got plenty of time to set in.

Like baking soda, vinegar can do an excellent job of efficiently removing foul odours naturally. Although many dislike the odour of vinegar itself, it tends to subside as it dries up, so you’ll only have to subject yourself or your family to its smell for a short period.

Pour white vinegar into a spray bottle and apply it evenly to your dried and vacuumed carpet. It will take some time to dry completely, but it will do an excellent job of soaking up and removing pet urine, cigarette smoke, and other foul odours that have penetrated deep into your carpet.

Vodka has plenty of wonderful uses, but did you know that it’s a great way to clean and disinfect? Vodka is powerful and can outright kill bacteria deep inside of carpets. Since vodka tends to be a little more expensive than vinegar or baking soda and it’s particularly effective at combatting pet urine and stains, apply it only in select areas with a spray bottle rather than all over the carpet.

Worthy of an article on their own, these natural cleaning products use the same approach that bacteria do to feed off the source of the odour. The only difference is that the enzymes in these products do so far more efficiently than the bacteria that cause the odour in the first place. By harnessing the power of nature, bio-enzymatic cleaning equipment and products can effectively treat foul odours at their source.

In cases of water damage or mould, eliminating smells may take a lot more than a bottle of vinegar or a spray of vodka. In cases where pet urine, stains, and bad smells have gotten to a point where they can no longer be dealt with topically, a quality carpet replacement and cleaning service will need to be called in. Stains and foul odours can be three times as large deeper in the carpet and beyond its backing, which means that parts of the carpet may need to be replaced and the subfloor will need to be disinfected rather than the carpet itself.

If you’ve tried the above methods of removing foul odours from your carpet, in most cases they’ll do the trick. In cases where the odour persists, more serious damage may have occurred and more heavy-duty measures will be required to make your home healthy and pleasant smelling again. Contact Floodcare if your carpets are scaring away guests and you’d like an affordable and efficient solution.