Most household furnishings and materials show visible signs that indicate they need to be cleaned. Rings form on bathtubs, stains on cushions, and scuffs get highlighted on wooden floors. However, this isn’t the case with carpets.
Although they add pristine to your home, carpets can harbour odour and hide grime, pollutants, and germs that make your living space unhygienic. While you have the option to scrub or vacuum your carpet to remove spills and crumbs, you’ll need to do much more than that to make it clean.
Hiring the services of professional steam cleaning companies like Summit Facility Services will be beneficial in effectively removing odours, oil stains and pollutants from carpets.
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Importance Of Cleaning Your Carpet
Regular cleaning is the most effective way to remove the dirt, grime, dust, or stains trapped in carpets. There are methods of cleaning carpets that vary in scope and intensity. Although most people know and understand the importance of cleaning carpets, few people know how often they should clean their rugs.
Essentially, the frequency of carpet cleaning depends largely on:
- Indoor traffic levels
- Presence of pets or children in a household
- Warranty Requirements
- Carpet colour
Cleaning your carpet is vital for various reasons; these include:
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Clean Carpets Reduce Health Hazards
Carpets can cause different health problems, particularly for the elderly and children. Rugs carry dust particles, bacteria and allergens that may put the people in your home at risk of acquiring respiratory issues like allergies and asthma. If you or one of your family members have breathing problems, contaminants in carpets can aggravate them.
Although regular vacuuming removes surface dirt, dust mites, and bacteria, it doesn’t exhaust them. With time, the contaminants accumulate, increasing health risks. Deep-cleaning your carpet helps in removing pollutants. This allows you to breathe better and lowers the risk of health problems.
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Better Indoor Air Quality
Dirty carpets can impede the flow of air in your house. When dust, debris, and dirt clog the rug, the indoor air quality gets compromised. This causes the rooms and hallways to get stuffy and unpleasant. Regular carpet cleaning removes dust and debris from the carpet. This allows the air to flow freely in the house, improving indoor air flow and quality.
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Improved Carpet Fibers
Cleaning carpets helps in improving their feel and look on floors. Dust and dirt build-up causes carpet fibres to loosen up, giving the rug an old, worn-out look. It also gives the carpet a rough feel and flattens it, even with padding beneath. Cleaning the rug removes dust and dirt. This protects carpet fibres and prevents them from tearing.
As a result, the carpet will feel softer and look good for an extended period of time. Installing carpets in your home costs a considerable amount; protect your investment by taking proper care of them. Daily maintenance and routine deep cleaning ensure that your carpet and home stay clean, fresh, and healthy.
Factors That Affect The Frequency Of Carpet Cleaning
Most people are unsure how frequently they should clean their carpets. As a rule of thumb, carpet vacuuming should be done twice a week and professional cleaning once a year. However, this frequency changes based on the previously-mentioned factors. These include:
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Indoor Traffic
Your home’s traffic level can determine how often you should clean your carpet. For instance, households with heavy traffic should clean their carpets three to seven times per week and have them deep-cleaned every three to six months.
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Presence Of Pets And Children
Dirt, food particles, grime, and dust find their way into your carpets if your household has pets and children. Dirty carpets increase home health risks, which explains why frequent carpet cleaning in such households is necessary.
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Carpet Color
Your carpet’s colour also affects how often you should clean it. Dirt, grime, and stains are more visible on bright-coloured carpets. Therefore, they need to be cleaned more frequently than dark-coloured ones.
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Warranty Requirements
Warranty requirements may also determine how often you should clean your carpet. Most manufacturers expect carpet buyers to follow specific cleaning plans to maintain warranties. It’s common for carpet warranties to require professional carpet cleaning once or twice every year. In some instances, carpet manufacturers need buyers to keep cleaning receipts and provide them as evidence of proper care if a warranty issue arises.
Frequency Of Cleaning Your Carpet
While the factors above may affect the frequency of carpet cleaning, having a schedule ensures your carpet is properly maintained and your family lives in a hygienic space. The frequency of cleaning carpets varies from one household to another. Below is a guideline that can help you determine how often you should clean your carpets:
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Vacuum Clean Your Carpet Each Week
Vacuuming is the most common method of cleaning carpets because it effectively removes dust. Ideally, carpets should be vacuumed each week. Below are the varying frequencies of carpet vacuuming based on the situation in your home:
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Weekly Vacuuming In High-Traffic Homes
If your family is rarely home, you may only need to vacuum your carpet once a week. However, busy families with high indoor traffic should clean their carpets multiple times- two to three times a week- to remove dust and dirt brought by people living in the household.
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Daily Vacuuming For Homes With Pets And Children
Children and pets deposit allergens and dirt on carpets as they run around. Consider vacuuming your carpets daily to remove allergens and dirt if you have them in your home. Similarly, households that allow people to enter the house with their shoes on should vacuum their carpets daily.
Shoes bring dirt to your carpet and carry bacteria, germs, and toxins that contaminate indoor floor surfaces, including carpets. Daily vacuuming may be necessary to remove pollutants from your living spaces.
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Brightly Colored Carpets
Light-coloured rugs brighten the home and bring life to it. However, stains and dirt are more conspicuous on such carpets than on darker ones. To maintain a neat look on bright rugs, vacuum them at least two times a week.
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Shampoo Your Carpet Annually
Carpet shampooing involves the use of cleaning solutions, scrubbing and vacuum suctioning to remove grime, allergens, stains and odour from carpets. Ideally, households should conduct this type of carpet cleaning once a year. As mentioned, the frequency can vary depending on the following situations:
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There’s A Lot Of Traffic In Your House
The ideal frequency for households with high indoor traffic to shampoo their carpets is once every six to 12 months.
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Do you Have Children Or Pets?
The frequency of shampooing carpets increases for families that have pets or children. Such households experience high deposits of allergens and stains from spillage and food particles. For such homes, it may be necessary to shampoo carpets more regularly, preferably once every three to six months.
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You Have Family Members Who Suffer From Allergies
Although carpets filter allergens and dust, these pollutants build up over time. Vacuuming helps get rid of the contaminants, but allergens quickly reappear and continue to accumulate. For people with bad allergies, shampooing carpets once every two months removes allergens completely and makes the air in the home breathable. The ideal frequency for shampooing light-coloured carpets is once every six months. You may shampoo them more than once if you notice dinginess on them.
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Steam Clean Your Carpet Every 12-18 Months
Steam-cleaning is a deep-cleaning method that combines chemicals and hot water to remove unseen dirt and pests in carpets. It’s the most effective carpet cleaning technique for removing debris, grime, dirt, stains, and odour from carpet surfaces and internal fibres. Ideally, carpets should be cleaned using this method at least once every one to one and a half years.
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Annual Steam Cleaning For Homes With Children
If you have children in your home, young or older, your carpet is prone to germs and dirt. This means you must clean the rug daily or every few days and shampoo your carpet every six months. To keep it fresh, have a professional steam clean the carpet at least once every 12 to 18 months.
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Biannual Steam Cleaning For Households With Pets
The frequency of steam cleaning carpets increases when you have pets in your home. Besides the mud on their paws, pets shake off dander every now and then, causing your carpet to become dirty. Besides vacuuming your carpet twice a week, steam-clean it at least once every three to six months and hire professional cleaning services every six months to remove any lingering odours.
Wrapping It All Up
In most homes, carpets form an integral part of furnishings. People install them to keep their homes warm, add comfort, dampen sound, and enhance the look of their home’s interiors. Cleaning carpets is an important aspect of enjoying these benefits. Dirty carpets introduce allergens and bacteria to homes, putting everyone in it at risk of developing respiratory illnesses.
How often you should clean your carpet also varies depending on the cleaning method. For instance, carpet vacuuming should be done more frequently than shampooing or deep cleaning. If you own a carpet and are wondering how often you should clean it, follow the guidelines discussed above.
