Though black candle soot might look impossible to remove from your carpet, there are steps you can take to get the stain to completely disappear.
Better yet, the ingredients that can be used to remove these dark stains from your carpet are household products that might already be in your kitchen cupboards.
If you have a vacuum, and some kind of absorbent such as baking soda or cornstarch, you can begin to remove black candle soot from the carpet relatively easily.
How to Remove Black Candle Soot From Carpet
Once you have vacuumed the excess soot up, baking soda (also known as bicarbonate of soda), cornstarch, or any other absorbents you may have at home can be used to treat the stain.
Whatever absorbent you have, this can be put on top of the black ash stain on your carpet. Let it sit on top of the stain for a minimum of one hour, being careful to avoid treading on this part of the carpet.
It is also worth being mindful of whether you have pets that might be curious about the baking soda or cornstarch on your carpet. It would not do them any good, so keep them away from the candle-soot danger zone.
After at least an hour, you can vacuum over the absorbent. Now, don’t panic – there will still be a bit of a stain there. We’re not done yet.
Once you’ve vacuumed up as much as you can, grab a clean cloth, preferably a white one, so there is no chance of any color transferring onto your carpet and worsening the problem.
Wet the cloth and gently sponge the candle soot mark on your carpet with a dry-cleaning solvent. If you don’t typically use a dry-cleaning solvent in your weekly house clean (we don’t either, don’t worry!), then read more here about the kind of thing to look for. The most important thing is that you’re using a solvent that is designed or suitable to be used on carpets.
Once you’ve got some dry-cleaning solvent down on the stain, blot it until the solvent is fully absorbed into the carpet. At this point, hopefully, you should be beginning to see changes in the black ash stain as it is lifted by the solvent.
Then, you should repeat sponging the soot mark with a clean cloth and solvent and then blotting the solvent away. This should attack even the most stubborn of stains.
Will Soot Come Out of Carpet?
Black candle soot, in most instances, can be removed from your carpet. However, this does depend on several factors.
How your carpet has been constructed will play a role in how easy it is to clean. Different carpet fibers will absorb soot in different quantities and at different speeds.
The amount of soot that there also shapes how easy it is to remove it. If there has been a lot of soot on the carpet for a long while, it will have significantly stained the carpet’s fibers, and getting them back to their previous state will be a challenge.
Likewise, if a lot of soot has been allowed to settle, or even trodden into the carpet, the soot will be stubborn as it has been buried into the carpet.
If the carpet soot has penetrated the carpet’s backing, then this might not be possible to entirely remove. The surface stain can most likely be improved, but getting your cleaning product to the carpet backing (without causing any damage to the general appearance of your carpet or damaging any carpet fibers) is tricky.
It’s absolutely worth trying the black candle soot removal technique as described above multiple times, as each time, more of the stain might leave your carpet. Try to use a strong vacuum cleaner if you can; there are most likely opportunities to hire a powerful vacuum cleaner or a similar device designed to clean carpets near you.
If you’re struggling to remove soot from your carpet, here are some dos and don’ts:
Do:
– Use a vacuum cleaner on the stain before trying anything else. This will remove the top layer of the stain and stop you from rubbing soot into your carpet and making the stain worse. You might be surprised as to how much soot this can remove!
– Repeat the cleaning process. Add baking soda multiple times if you need to, vacuum this up and then use a carpet-cleaning solvent on a cloth a couple of times and see if this improves the soot stain.
Don’t:
– It is essential that you refrain from rubbing, wetting, or wiping the soot stain in any way before attempting to vacuum it up. This will press the soot deeper into your carpet, making it much harder to remove, especially if the stain is relatively fresh.
– Do not try to bleach the soot or use a cleaning product not designed for carpets. This might sound obvious, but many people have realized far too late that bleach does not only removes stains but will discolor your carpet entirely. Cleaning products not designed for your carpet might be too strong and not appropriate for this stain removal job.
Does Vinegar Remove Soot?
Vinegar is a pretty handy cleaner for all types of things around the house, and the same goes for soot. Vinegar can remove soot; it can break down oily marks very efficiently.
To do this, mix regular white vinegar and warm water in a 3:1 ratio, and then this can be used on a sponge or cloth to remove soot from any surfaces in your home.
If you use this method on your carpet, vacuum the soot stain first, and then use the vinegar and water solution to clean the stain, rather than buying a carpet cleaning solution.
If this method does not work on your household soot, then it might be worth investing in a cleaning solvent and vice versa. Try vinegar if other solutions are not leaving you with the pristine carpet you are after.
Final Thoughts
However bad the soot stain on your carpet is at the moment, it can undoubtedly be improved.
There are cheap and easy ways to get soot up off of your carpet, and these methods should be repeated for the best results.
If you have baking soda, cornstarch, or vinegar in the house, you can get going today and make some awesome home-cleaning products that will lift plenty of soot off of your carpet.