How to Remove Coffee Stains From Your Carpet

Nothing feels as time time-stopping, heartbeat-skipping, breath-hitching than a full coffee cup plummeting towards the carpet – it happens to us all. But what can we do to take care of coffee spills, so they don’t leave quite as many stains (and tears) in their wake? Well, with a quick reaction and a bit of TLC, your carpet can be restored to its gleaming self in no time!

From fresh coffee spills to the deeper set stain, our tips and tricks will show you how to tackle a coffee cup mishap with ease, as well as how to remove old coffee stains from your carpet. Let’s get started!

It’s always best to take care of a coffee spill straight away before it has chance to set, so let’s first look at how to get rid of fresh coffee stains. Before we get down to dabbing and scrubbing, it’s helpful to know what tools you’ll need to have at the ready for coffee stains, so you’re able to take care of it as fast as you can. It’s quite a concise list and most of the items you’ll likely have in your kitchen cupboards already:

• Paper towel
• Bicarbonate of soda
• Warm water
• White vinegar
• Dish soap
• Sponge
• Vacuum

Now you’re ready with the coffee stain essentials, it’s time to pop on that cleaning playlist, and we can get down to ensuring that coffee spill isn’t stuck lingering for years to come.

First things first, you’ll need to soak up as much liquid as you can, preventing it from sinking into the fibres of your carpet. As such, you’ll need to put that paper towel to good use. Lightly place the paper towel over the area the coffee spill is sitting, trying to cover as much of the liquid as you possibly can. Then, gently dab the coffee spill with the paper towel, but don’t apply too much pressure - and definitely don’t scrub, as this can make it worse.

You’ll know best how many paper towel sheets you’ll need, but we recommend being quite liberal here, to ensure the vast amount of the coffee spill is soaked up from the get-go.

With the top layer of the coffee spill dealt with, we can now look at lifting the coffee stain out of the deeper carpet fibres. In other words, it’s time to grab the bicarbonate of soda (or bicarb for short). Start by mixing bicarb and water together until it forms a thick paste, then gently dab it onto the coffee stain using a soft cloth. Make sure to get a good covering over the stain, and then gently scrub the mixture into the coffee spill until you notice the mark start to lift.

Don’t worry about any lingering specs of bicarb left over from this, as we’ll take care of cleaning this up in the next step.

Once the stain is coming up, you’ll want to clean the area of any lingering bicarb, as well as any little spots of the coffee spill that might be left behind. To do this, just mix ½ a teaspoon of dish soap, ½ a teaspoon of white vinegar, and 2 cups of water together, and dab the mixture onto the coffee spill with a sponge. Then, you can start blotting the mixture with a dry cloth until (hopefully) the coffee stain can no longer be seen!

Make sure to clean up any spots of soap left over and once fully dried, go ahead and use your vacuum to clean up any bits of bicarb left over from the previous step. And you’re done – you should now have a fresh carpet to sit back and admire!

Now, it’s time to get down to the tough part – how do we remove old coffee stains from the carpet? Don’t worry, we’ve got the answer for you!  There are plenty of cleaning hacks online that may sound a bit strange but could hold the secret to removing coffee stains from your carpet. The best part is that, again, most of these coffee stain tips and tricks use items you’ll already have!

So, you can give the steps from above a go on old coffee stains, but you can also try:

• Toothpaste: A dab of this around the coffee stained area, mixed with a bit of elbow grease, is a great hack. Lightly dampen the area first and give the coffee stain a gentle scrub – just make sure to use white toothpaste to avoid any colour transfer.  
• White vinegar: Not only a great in cooking, a white vinegar and water mix is also a dab hand at removing coffee stains. Mix one cup of warm water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar, then scrub the stain with a plain and clean cloth, until it starts to shift.
• Carpet stain remover: Of course, if all else fails you can make a trip to the supermarket to pick up a stain remover specifically designed for use on carpets. Just make sure to read the label to be sure it’s safe for use on the colour of your carpet.

And that’s all – your carpet is now free from pesky coffee stains! Cleaning a wooden floor of stains may be quite straightforward, but carpets are a bit more susceptible to stains. So, if you’re looking for more carpet cleaning tips like how to remove makeup or red wine stains, head over to our blog!