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How To Get Bleach Stains From Carpet & Get Your Carpet Color Restored
Welcome To Revive Carpet Repair, Dyeing & Cleaning, The DIY Carpet MythBusters: The Chemical Expert’s Guide on How To Remove Bleach Stains Out Of Carpet in order to restore your carpet’s color
If you or someone spilled bleach or accidentally sprayed bleach on your carpet, then please pay attention to the following information. It will save you Pain & Discomfort, Money & Liability for someone else’ carpet if you’re renting or visiting!
#1- You Must Understand These Tidbits about Bleach In Order To Know How To Deal With Bleach
The following are definitions and information you need to know before tackling any bleach spot:
- Bleach is almost always an Oxidation Chemical, such as Sodium Hypochlorite.
- Bleach is active FOREVER until you neutralize it first. Any attempts to dye carpet with bleach in it will prove disasterous and unproductive at best.
- Chlorine Bleach “removes” color, it does not add color, such as in a stain. Chlorine Bleach is not a color, it is a color-stripper that removes color chemically.
- Bleach strikes the blue first, then the red, then the yellow. Undoubtedly, your bleach spots are orange, yellow or white depending on the strength of the bleach.
- Never Scrub bleach, all you will do is cause it to go bigger and abrase and potentially damage the carpet, especially on low pile berber carpeting.
- Stay away from RIT Dye, the color wont match and you could ruin the carpet, causing more damage and money to repair or potentially having to patch it.
- Stay away from Dish Soap, because this is a high PH surfactant, which will act like a freeway for your bleach to travel and infect other fibers on the carpet that arent currently affected. Basically, its like spreading a virus!
DONT FOLLOW THE FOLLOWING “MYTH’S” AKA BAD ADVICE ON THE INTERNET- DON’T DO IT- OR YOU WILL SUFFER!
MYTH #1: “Putting Dish Soap In Your Carpet To Remove Bleach Is A Effective And Is A Good Idea.”
EXPERT’S RESPONSE: NO IT’S NOT!- DON’T DO IT. EVER.
BAD ADVICE #1 – COIT’s website “How To Get Bleach Out Of Carpet” has 2 REALLY pieces of BAD advice.
- “Mix ¼ tsp of mild dish soap with 1 cup of warm water.
- Pour the solution over the bleach stain and let sit for about 5 minutes.
- Once the stain has dried, rub it with a cloth or sponge, working from the outside in so you don’t spread the stain.
- Rinse with cold water and dry.”
- BAD ADVICE #2 – ehowhome’s youtube video “How To Remove Bleach From Carpet” has 2 REALLY pieces of BAD advice.
- he says ” add dishsoap and then blot the area dry after letting it soak for five minutes. Clean bleach from carpeting, smelling the area to ensure its all removed”
Please dont do this. Dish soap is a high PH surfactant and will act like a freeway to transport the high alkaline substance (bleach) to expand to other areas. Plus it blocks the dye sites when you try to dye it and needs to be removed thoroughly before any “real” dyeing can occur. Expect to pay a surcharge to have a professional de-foam your carpeting, which is really tedious, a real mess.
MYTH #2: “Pouring the soap or water concoction over the stain and letting sit, even for 5 minutes.”
Why you ask? This is a recipe for disaster for many reasons. #1- you are HIGHLY susceptible to cellulosic browning especially on berber or lowpile carpeting. Don’t leave water sitting in your carpeting!
MYTH #3: “Once the stain has dried, rub it with a cloth or sponge, working from the outside in so you don’t spread the stain.”
Don’t abrase or rub carpeting with bleach in it. All you risk is further penetrating the bleach into the pad, primary & secondary backing of the carpet, making it harder to get out. Also, you risk damaging the pile and fibers by “fraying” the carpeting to the point where they cant be dyed anymore= permanent damage.
MYTH#4: “Just Put RIT Dye on it, it will look better”
NO it won’t. There are many reasons why this wont work:- You haven’t neutralized the bleach, no dyeing can start to occur until bleach is neutralized. You have too high of a PH in the carpet for dye sites on the carpet to accept the dye.
- RIT carpet dye is for clothes, not carpet.
- Unless you know color theory and what colors make up your carpet and what colors were removed by the dye, then what colors to add back in, you CANT get a successful carpet dye.
- Unless you have a “mordant”, defined as a chemical that allows dye to adhere to the carpet tufts and fibers, you are wasting your time. You need a mordant that acts as a sticking agent for the dye to properly stick to the carpet fiber. BY THE WAY, DO YOU KNOW WHAT CARPET FIBER YOU HAVE? You must be careful about treating wool different from nylon etc.
MYTH #5: “Just Color It with A Crayon”
NO it won’t last a long time. This is a gimmicky solution that fails very fast. This is like putting cover-up on a zit.- Crayons are wax and wax can be removed with ice or with alcohol or with a thorough cleaning depending on how much crayon was used.
- crayons are extremely temporary and will come off with most wear or abrasion or traffic to carpet area.
Follow these steps to Remove Bleach Stains From Carpet
Make sure you have these pieces of equipment BEFORE attempting any Bleach Stain/Spot Removal
- A wet/dry shop vac
- liquid bleach neutralizer
- Hot Water
Step By Step Instructions How To Remove Bleach From Carpet & How to Fix Bleach Spots
- Buy Chlorine Bleach Neutralizer
- Mix up very hot water
- Add Bleach Neutralizer Crystals to Hot Water
- Mix them up till they dissolve. Note, it works better with hot water, not cold water.
- gently pour over affected area only, be careful to cover affected areas and try not to get unaffected areas.
- wait 5 minutes
- Thoroughly extract with wet/dry vac
- Repeat if bleach was full strength and not diluted prior to spilling on carpet.
- As far as adding color back in, color theory is a science and cannot be explained here, simply put, one needs to know what color their carpet is made of, what percentages of red, yellow, blue and black, if applicable. Then, one needs to know what color(s) got removed from the bleach and then what colors need to be added back in and the correct percentage as well as how to get colorfast carpet dyes, how to apply dyes and mordants, and how not to affect the non-bleached areas while dyeing, as well as what temperatures to dye specific fiber types, ex: wool, nylon etc.
- Best advice is to hire a carpet dyeing bleach spot removal professional for about $200 or so and leave your stress behind.
These are things that do NOT REMOVE bleach from your carpet- Don’t believe the internet, they’re not Carpet Chemist’s!
- Dish Soap or any type of soap
- Vinegar
- Baking Soda
- Rit Dye
- Water
- Crayons
- Rubbing or Agitating the Carpet
Home-made Bleach Spot Removal “Fails”
RIT dye
– RIT dye is for fabrics, and not carpets. The biggest issue here is that 1 out of the box color will NOT match your carpet’s faded color for a variety of reasons.
- #1- you havent neutralized the bleach, you cannot get dye to adhere to a high alkaline solution covering the nylon fiber.
- #2- bleach aka sodium hypochlorite strikes blue first, then red, then yellow in that order. On a bleach fade, you must know color correction theory and what percentages to add dye back in to get a perfect color match. Otherwise, you will get dinged for your deposit or at very worst have a big dark permanent looking “stain” or spot on your carpet. It will look worse that the faded spot did. RIT dye is super difficult to master and no professional carpet dyer would ever use this. Please DONT attempt this.
Acrylic Paint or Interior House Paint
Please avoid the temptation to try to dye the bleach spot with ANY type of paint. #1- paints are not soft and will cause the carpet fibers to be permanently stiff or hardened. Also, read #1 under RIT dye for the same reasons. Please DONT attempt to color correct your carpet with ANY type of paint.
Revive IT Floor Care Services is committed to professionally restoring your carpet’s color and fiber to the original condition. We use chemistry to remove foreign substances (aka “stains”) as well as color correction restoration to gently and delicately feather blend color back in to the affected fibers (only). Often, this price starts at around $200. Bleach spot repair is not a DIY job. Your DIY attempt could actually make the spot on the carpet look WORSE. Also, we can restore the color often without using a knife on the carpet, without needing to do a carpet patch or bonded insert. So give us a call today to discuss your situation at (310) 736-2018!