3 Upholstery Cleaning Mistakes That Take You Back to Square One

Whether you’re cleaning a cotton couch, nylon sofa, silk chair, or a polyester seat, you should have a razor-sharp focus on avoiding any damage to the fabric.

Upholstery fabric like wool, leather, rayon, nylon, and silk can easily get damaged if you use the wrong cleaning approach. Not only will the stains persist, but your upholstery will also lose its strength and durability.

This blog walk you through three upholstery cleaning mistakes that can take you back to square one. How should you avoid them? Keep reading.

1. Using Harsh Cleaning Products

They may sound tempting to use, but harsh cleaning products can ultimately wreak havoc on upholstery fabric. Even if you’re using a homemade solution, you have not run it by the fabric manufacturer or professional fabric cleaners who understand fabric chemistry and composition.

Whether you’re using a product you picked up from Target or a concoction you whipped up under the sink, proceed with caution. As a team of experienced upholstery cleaners, we recommend avoiding this approach altogether. The wrong cleaning products can permanently damage your furniture.

Recommended Read: The Dirty Truth About Cleaning Products

2. Failing to Test the Fabric

Every fabric must be handled and cleaned differently. Before you begin, you must test the fiber type and dye stability to determine the best cleaning approach. If you fail to do this, your cleaning approach may not be what the fabric needs.

Ideally, you should also prepare the area beforehand. Many homeowners make the mistake of kick-starting the cleaning process with little to no preparation. If you don’t protect the surrounding furnishings, you’re asking for trouble. The rest of your more vulnerable furniture can end up getting damaged.

3. Taking Things Into Your Own Hands

As DIY projects become increasingly popular, people have started taking more complex, specialized cleaning tasks into their own hands. This is a big risk.

Upholstery cleaning requires extensive experience, expertise, training, and the right tools. You’ll struggle to achieve good results if even one of these elements is missing. At best, you’ll manage to remove some superficial stains. At worst, you may scald the fabric.

Toying around with new chemicals and cleaning agents is a huge risk regardless of how hard-wearing your upholstery fabric may be. Instead of trying your hand at experimental methods and DIY tactics, turn to the pros for help.

At Alameda Cleaners, we use a proprietary 12-step upholstery cleaning process to achieve excellent results. Our team takes care of fabric testing, area prep, pre-vacuuming, pre-treatment, pre-spotting, pre-grooming, soil extraction and rinsing, neutralizing, post-spotting, post-grooming, speed drying, and post-cleaning inspection. We cover all the bases to ensure that your upholstery looks clean and restored.

Explore our upholstery cleaning services to get started and call us for more information. We also offer area rug cleaning, carpet cleaning, and fabric protection across Portland and Vancouver.