“How often should my carpets be cleaned?”, is one of the most often asked questions from my 30+ years as a cleaning specialist, and the answer is…it depends!

Factors which can affect cleaning frequency are,

How many people use the carpet every day.

Do they take their shoes off or is it a public area.

How often is proper vacuuming done, and

What method of cleaning was used last time, if at all?

These things can make an enormous difference to how often a carpet needs cleaning..

 

Let’s take a look at two scenarios.

Which of these are you?

In the first, you have good quality dense pile carpet. You have low foot traffic (no kids!) and you always take off your shoes at the door. You carefully vacuum twice every week. And you have a professional cleaning company use a low moisture, ph neutral cleaning system on your carpet.

In such circumstances, you really only need to clean the carpet every 1 or 2 years. More often wouldn’t hurt, but it\’s really not necessary unless you are having visitors you want to impress!

Now let’s take another scenario.

Perhaps you have a large family with several children and pets. Or a public area such as a commercial building with heavy foot traffic coming in off the street.

Perhaps vacuuming is not done regularly, or not thoroughly. And cleaning is done by a ‘cheap and cheerful’ or budget company (this can work out more expensive).

In this case, cleaning would be needed every 4 to 6 months. And even then rapid wear would be impossible to prevent without improving on vacuuming or increasing cleaning frequency even further.

Probably though, you fall somewhere in between these two extremes. As a rough rule of thumb, I’ve found that the vast majority of my clients fall into a pattern of yearly cleaning, with some needing a light clean or spot removal in between. Commercial buildings or public areas should budget for twice-yearly cleaning with a light clean in between. This is not too often to be prohibitively expensive, yet often enough to keep carpets looking good.

Planning to do this will give you the best appearance, and longest life from your carpeting and fabrics.

In fact, major carpet manufacturers, including Shaws Industries the world\’s largest carpet maker, and Dupont one of the worlds largest fibre manufacturers recommend professional cleaning every 6 – 18 months depending on usage.

The key is always, clean before it looks dirty.

Carpet is superbly designed to hide soil. By the time it looks dirty, damage and permanent wear has already occurred.

If your carpet hasn’t been cleaned in the last 1 –2 years, don’t put it off any longer. If you’ve just moved into a new home, clean the carpets immediately – you never know what might be in them!

Another consideration would be health reasons, such as asthma, eczema, or other conditions. Considerable research has confirmed that carpet is very beneficial to asthma and eczema sufferers – as long as they are thoroughly cleaned, using a Hypoallergenic Cleaning Method, on a regular basis