The Bane of Stains: Adhesive Residue

Over the past year, we became all too familiar with what it means to be six feet apart. Many stores, pharmacies, offices and restaurants provided a customer service by placing stickers, decals or tape on their floors to help us gauge six feet of distance. Preferred Carpet Care in Redding would like to express our appreciation to the businesses who offered and continue to provide this help to their customers.

As more people in California receive their vaccines, staying six feet apart in lines and queues will eventually become unnecessary. But when it’s time to remove those stickers, the adhesive used to keep them attached usually leaves behind a residue. When foot traffic brings in dirt and dust, that unseen residue becomes an unsightly stain.

Removing Adhesive Marks

You probably have several distance markers, and that means several stains to deal with. Caring for each one on your own is going to take time and effort that you likely cannot afford with the influx of customers. Your best option is professional cleaning from Preferred Carpet Care!

In the spirit of this series, however, there is a procedure that might help remove some of the unsightliness until we fully clean your carpets or floors. As always, avoid using DIY remedies involving things like acetone, WD-40, peanut butter, or toothpaste as these items will likely cause more damage than stain removal!

1. Remove whatever excess adhesive that you can. Parts of the stickers themselves might be left behind, so make sure you get up as much as possible. Use a straight edge to scrape off any residue, but be careful — if it starts to bring up the fibers in your pile, leave it for the rest of the process.
2. Pour distilled white vinegar into a cloth and blot the area for at least 60 seconds. Give it about 15 minutes to break down the adhesive. Use a different wet cloth to dab the area and remove the adhesive, then allow the area to dry.
3. You could also try using a tablespoon of dish soap, without bleach or lanolin, mixed with one cup of warm water.
4. If the stain persists, pour isopropyl alcohol onto a clean cloth and dab the stain. Don’t pour the alcohol directly onto carpet or the floor.
5. Another alternative is to place a paper towel over the stain, then place a clean cloth over the towel. Take a steaming tool, like an iron or steam mop, and gently place it over the cloth for 10 seconds. In some cases, the heat and steam transfer the residue from the carpet fibers onto the paper towel.

In all honesty, most of these remedies typically result in partial success at best. Different types of adhesives and chemicals make their removal inconsistent as well as difficult — unless you use powerful extraction tools handled by experienced experts, like Preferred Carpet Care. Please give us a call or schedule an appointment online so we can bring your carpet and floors back to the fresh, clean, unmarked status you enjoyed before the pandemic. Don’t let old reminders stick around!