The best upholstery cleaner for your favorite furniture pieces is, agree with it or not, your vacuum cleaner. Regular upkeep with a vacuum can keep most stains at bay, and most house vacuums have attachments specifically designed for reaching covered furniture.

If you’ve got a spot the vacuum can’t handle, while the best upholstery cleaner is naturally the one commended by the manufacturer of your furniture, you will find that most top of the range carpet cleaners can be used as upholstery cleaners too. A good spray carpet cleaner is typically designed to deal with a extensive selection of stains, from pet stains to spilled wine. With upholstery, you’ll need to be lighter than with a carpet; otherwise you risk damaging the more delicate fibers in your upholstery, causing either weak and worn patches or faded spots. If you decide to utilise a carpet cleaner or other commercial fabric cleaner, be absolutely sure to test it in a small and inconspicuous place first. If you can test on the other side of an arm cover that is often a nice option. If after testing it seems like the product might be too robust, you can water down it and re-test it till you find the best density of product that is the best upholstery cleaner for that particular fabric.

If you consider the kind of stain, your options open up further and you may not need to reach for a commercial product in any event. Most stains on upholstery come from spilled food and beverages. Coffee is actually a pretty easy stain to handle — a little bar soap or diluted laundry detergent and a wet fabric (blotted in a light rounded motion in the direction of the wick of the fabric, and never viciously rubbed) will do the job. This works very well for lager stains too, though you may find you need to spray a light vinegar solution after to completely clean the stain. To create the best upholstery cleaner for juice stains, you can make your own mix of vinegar with a hint of ammonia. While red wine sounds difficult, often the best upholstery cleaner for those spills is plain old table salt! Leave a good layer of salt over the stain for a bit to soak up the wine, and then vacuum it up. Salt will work on most grease or butter stains from food, too.

For especially bad stains you might want to use pro upholstery cleaners. The best upholstery cleaner is one which has the experience to know which chemicals are the best match for different types of fabric stains ( the best upholstery cleaner for an ink stain may not be the one most suitable to a blood stain). A good upholstery cleaner can also penetrate deep into the fibers — all of the way through to the stuffing — but can do so delicately.

There are plenty of inventive solutions for caring for upholstery that can help to save you a bundle. For more cleaning secrets, visit www.cleaningsecretsinfo.com and sign up for Pam’s free e-mail course.

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