Upholstered Furniture

Steam it Gone dry vapor cleaners can clean your upholstered furniture and best of all, it will sanitize your furniture of mold, dust mites and all other germs that may be present. Unfortunately, people usually don’t clean their upholstered furniture for years and rent one of our steam cleaners hoping it will get a decades worth of dirt off of the arm of their chair or pen marks made years ago. This is the most heartbreaking job of all because we are so attached to our old sturdy furniture and they are nearly impossible to replace nowadays. Unfortunately stains like these are difficult to come out. However, take heart. I have had reports of office chairs that hadn’t been cleaned in over 10 years coming out looking practically new with just one faded spot remaining.

I advise that if it is the case that you are trying to take out ground in dirt and oils from the arms of couches or old stains, definitely use the appropriate solvent. On my blog entry, “Things that Steam it Gone Cannot Fix” I point to an article discussing how to remove ink stains.  On my page titled, “Carpet Cleaning” I mention the use of 1 part laundry detergent and 9 parts water in a spray bottle. This solution would also work for upholstered furniture. Spray a light film before using the towel covered triangle brush on the fabric. Finally, I would also consider using Oxy-Clean in the same manner, taking care to check all of these solutions on a part of the fabric that is tucked away to make sure the fabric can handle it.

With flat fabrics, such as linen or other woven fabrics, you should try the following method:

First, use Oxy-clean or some other oxygen bleach, 1 part to 9 parts water. Second, you should make an effort to spray the fabric thoroughly, almost till it is soaked. Blot with a towel to get some of the exess moisture out, and with it the soils that you are trying to remove. Finally, use the steam cleaner with the triangle brush wrapped in a towel and make overlapping passes across the entire surface, repeating several times and changing towels frequently.

In the office furniture scenario, no cleaning solutions were used, just gentle passes with the triangle brush over the fabric. There were embarrassing spill marks and dark black stains, most likely from food and dirt accumulating on the food stains.  The chairs came out almost like new.