Does Your Carpet Soil Quickly?

Perhaps Preferred Carpet Care has cleaned your carpets and rugs for years, or maybe your first service was only a couple of months ago. But in what seems like little time at all, your carpet shows a darker shade in certain spots. It might be a curved swath near the front door, or a couple of “traffic lanes” going down the hallway. How did your carpet start to get dirty again so soon? What can you do?

Top Causes of Dirty Carpets

Rapid carpet soiling is becoming more and more prevalent today, and we can’t really blame it all on COVID keeping people at home (although that’s part of it). There are a few typical reasons for carpet to show soil marks soon after a cleaning. Let’s go over four of them.

Lifestyle — some people take their shoes off outside or in a mudroom. Others have no problem wearing their street shoes throughout their homes. Many of us tend to eat our meals in the living room instead of a dining room, or at least tend to snack in front of the TV. These habits result in dirt, food particles, and contaminants making their way to the carpet very quickly. In many cases, there is more soil coming in than going out via cleaning. All that soil accumulates in our carpet, and eventually becomes noticeable.

Pile Construction — today’s carpets are typically manufactured using one of five yarn types: wool, nylon, olefin, acrylic, and polyester. With wool as an exception, all those types are byproducts of petroleum. As such, they get along great with oil-based particles, sometimes making a permanent bond with them. As we walk over streets, parking lots, dirty sidewalks and paved areas, our shoes collect bits of asphalt, tar, and other sticky substances (like chewing gum). Those sticky bits probably brought many other particles with them. Walking through the house with the same shoes transfers those bits to the carpet, creating visible soil spots.

Yarn Abrasion — new carpet has a polished finish added to the carpet pile to protect it and help keep it looking new. With this protection, soils cannot adhere to the carpet, so they get vacuumed up easily. When we tread dirt into the carpet, however, the abrasive grit scrapes that finish off, allowing other soils to latch onto the pile. If not cleaned regularly, the soil gets the time it needs for that bonding. Suddenly, your clean new carpet doesn’t stay clean as long as it used to.

Improper Cleaning — the hustle and bustle of everyday life often makes us compromise or sacrifice what we consider to be little things, like vacuuming. Missing one week won’t cause that much problem, will it? Well, take into consideration what we’ve already discussed. Time and inaction allow dirt and soil to accumulate in your carpet. Missing a vacuum session opens the way for many more particles to bond with your carpet.

Since very few people can avoid going outside, completely stopping dirt and soil particles from entering our homes is next to impossible. We need to get our carpets cleaned regularly twice a year. Preferred Carpet Care uses hot water extraction with cleaning solvents to break down particles, taking away the bond between carpet pile and contaminants. We rinse your carpet thoroughly, to make sure no solvents are left behind to attract more soiling. We also use industrial fans to accelerate the drying process so you can get back on your carpets as soon as possible.

If you believe your carpet is getting dirty quicker than it used to, or even if you’d like to find out what you can do to keep your clean carpet maintained, Preferred Carpet Care in Redding is happy to help you figure it out. Give us a call or schedule an appointment online. We’ll use our decades of experience, top-notch skill, and commercial equipment to keep your carpet soil free.