How to Get Coffee Stains Out of Carpet

Safely and Effectively Remove Coffee Stains From Your Carpet

How to Get Coffee Out of Your Carpet

Coffee is great for a morning pick me up. However, it’s not so great for clean looking carpets. If you’re like most people, at some point you’re going to spill some coffee on your carpet.

Then you’re faced with a situation where you need to know how to get coffee stains out of carpet. The good news is we’re here to help you with that.

Among the various things spilled on carpets, coffee presents plenty of carpet cleaning challenges. So, if you’ve found this page, you probably need to know how to remove coffee stains from carpet.

Clean up Coffee Stains Quickly!

Like most stains, efforts to remove coffee stains from carpet are best done when the coffee has been recently spilled. Fresh spots are easier to remove than dried set in stains that have been there for months.

Trying to remove old coffee stains from carpet is always going to be harder than removing them when they are fresh.

Coffee Stain on Carpet

A Note on Carpet Protection and Coffee Stains

While this may be too late now that you have a coffee stain on your carpet, it’s good to know for the future. Carpets come from the factory these days with pre-applied carpet protectant. This is usually good for 12-18 months before it needs to be reapplied.

Most people know the name Scotchgard, but in our opinion better options exist. Teflon products like Maxim Advanced work great. These protectants cause liquids to bead up instead of penetrate the dye sites.

Applying Carpet Protection Makes Stain Cleanup Easier

Applying carpet protection typically allows for much easier clean up, especially for acidic solutions (hint: coffee stains). As an added bonus, other dry and wet soils are easier to clean up as well.

Whether for protection against coffee stains, or otherwise, professionally applying carpet protection to your carpets is a good idea.

How to Remove Coffee Stains – Dish Detergent and Vinegar

Step 1: If the coffee stain is fresh, try and absorb as much of the coffee as you can with a dry rag, towel, or paper towel.

Step 2: Mix up about a tablespoon of dish detergent, a tablespoon of vinegar and 2 cups of warm water in a bowl.

Step 3: Dip a white rag or cloth into the bowl of solution until it’s saturated. Liberally dab the solution onto the stain, working from the outside of the stain to the middle. Rinse the cloth periodically in the bowl of solution. Remember, don’t scrub the carpet, instead blot it. Scrubbing risks damaging the carpet fibers or pulling fibers out of the backing.

Step 4: Rinse the area with warm water and use a wet vac, if you have one, to suck up the solution. If you don’t have a wet vac, use a different dry towel and use it to absorb as much of the rinse water as possible. Repeat this step a few times with the goal of getting as much solution and coffee laden rinse water out of the carpet.

Bottle of Dawn dish soap

What Happens if the Coffee Stain Reappears?

Normally when a coffee stain resurfaces after you have cleaned the area, it means that the coffee stain went past the carpet. It’s gone deeper and really saturated the carpet pad. When this occurs, you likely need to get a professional carpet cleaning.

Here’s why: Carpet pad does a nice job of keeping the carpet feeling comfortable to walk on. However, the foam material it’s made of is also quite absorbent. Kind of like a sponge. Liquid spills, like coffee, that get past the carpet, hit the top layer of the carpet pad and then soak in over a large area

coffee stain on carpet backing

Its What Lies Beneath The Carpet That Matters Here

On top, it looks like a small spill, but below it can be much larger. With pet urine stains, for example, a 6 inch visible ring on the top of the carpet often is 18-24 inches on the pad once you lift back the carpet to have a look beneath it.

A professional is going to have FAR stronger, specialized carpet cleaning equipment than what you can find at the store. They will be better equipped to remove coffee stains from carpet that are too hard to clean yourself. That carpet cleaning equipment has massively stronger vacuums than even the most powerful shop vacs.

They’ll have more effective solutions than you can buy in the store, and they’ll have specialized sprayers and tools to flood the areas for complete cleaning, while still allowing for effective drying so your carpet isn’t left soaking.

Still Having Trouble Getting Coffee Out of Your Carpet?

If you’ve tried out recommended solution to remove the coffee stain from your carpet but it still won’t budge, it’s probably time to call the professionals. We provide both residential and commercial carpet cleaning in Denver as well as carpet cleaning in Highlands Ranch, Littleton and throughout the entire Denver area.

We’d be happy to tackle that coffee stain for you.