While you know to take care when you have open bottles of nail polish around, accidents happen. If you spill some polish on a carpet and don't deal with it quickly, then it becomes a much bigger problem.

If this has happened to you, you may be able to get the polish off the carpet without leaving a stain. What do you need to do?

Clean Off Excess Polish

Your first job is to get as much polish off the carpet as you can without rubbing it further in. Get a spoon or knife and carefully scrape off the excess liquid. Go easy here — you don't want to push the polish into the fibres or to spread them around the initial spill area.

Once you've done this, blot the stain with a damp cloth or paper towel. This should remove some of the remaining spill.

Clean Out the Stain

Nail polish remover is made to remove polish from your nails. So, it can technically also remove it from other surfaces. However, you do need to be careful here. If you use the wrong product or if contact will damage your carpet, you could make the problem worse.

You need a non-acetone remover for this job. Products that contain acetone are more likely to affect the colour of your carpet or cause damage to its fibres.

Test the remover on an area of the carpet that is normally hidden, such as an edge or corner. Dab a small amount on the test area and then blot it off with a clean white cloth or paper towel.

If the colour of the carpet changes, this clean-up solution isn't going to work for you. It's the same if you see a colour transfer on the cloth or towel after you blot the remover up.

However, if everything looks all right, you can have a go on the spill. Put some remover on a cloth and gently blot the polish.

Keep doing this until all the polish and its residue comes off the carpet. You may need to change cloths regularly during this process whenever they pick up polish and discolour.

In some cases, this fix will get all the nail polish and its stain out of your carpet. However, you might still be able to see the stain even if you clean all the polish off. This process also works best on a fresh wet spill than a dry one.

If you don't want to tackle this spill yourself or if you can't clean your carpet enough to make you happy, then call in a carpet cleaning company. They have products and techniques that can get the stain out of your carpet more effectively.

Share