If you have scruffy or shabby furniture in your family-room at your house in Brixton or anywhere else in London, and you cannot afford to buy new furniture, your best bet would be to hire a professional upholstery cleaning company like Cleaningsure. However, there are several other ideas that can prove to be helpful for upholstery cleaning before you call in the professional.
1. Vacuum upholster first
Clean up any debris that can make upholstery dirtier, including loose pieces of dirt and pet hair, using all of the upholstery attachments of your vacuum cleaner.
2. Identify the various stains
You can use steam cleaning to get rid of stains from coffee, dirt, food, pee or poop, and/or wine. Multiple cleaning treatments may have to be implemented for more stubborn stains. You may even have to use chemical-based cleaners to remove stains that are hard-to-lift or are oil-based.
3. Read furniture upholstery tags
The upholstery of most furniture used in Brixton comes with fabric care instructions or tags, which provide information on which cleaning solutions can be used. If a tag cannot be found, the website of the furniture manufacturer should be checked. The color-fastness and damage-resistance of upholstery can be tested by using a suitable cleaner on a hidden, small section of the fabric.
Following are the three most common markings that are present on the tags of furniture upholstery in London:
W = This stands for water, which means that water-based cleaning products can be used to clean such upholstery. So, you can opt for DIY cleaning in order to clean such upholstery.
S = This stands for solvent, which means that you can only clean such upholstery using solvent- or water-free cleaning products, such as dry-cleaning solvent. If a dry-cleaning product is used, it should be made sure that the label is read since using the chemicals incorrectly can prove to be hazardous.
SW or WS = This means that you should either use dry-cleaning or water-based cleaning products to clean such upholstery. However, there is always the possibility that the fabric may get damaged. Hence, it is better to get such upholstery cleaned by a professional cleaning company in Brixton.
X = It can be rather challenging to clean fabric with this tag even for professionals since you cannot use neither dry- nor water-based cleaning products. Obviously, this means that you should not attempt to clean such upholstery on your own.
4. Rent a steam cleaner
It would be better for you to rent steam cleaning equipment in London since you will likely not be using it too frequently. Moreover, the price of larger furniture and upholstery steam cleaners can be more than £95.
5. Consider the cost of upholstery cleaning products
Perhaps the biggest drawback of DIY upholstery cleaning is the price of the cleaning products, which may surprise you. A bottle of upholstery cleaner can cost anywhere between £9 and £12, and multiple bottles are often required for bigger upholstery cleaning jobs. If you have children or pets in the house or if anyone suffers from allergies, you will have to make sure that you select a non-toxic cleaner.
As you probably realize, even though there are plenty of DIY upholstery cleaning ideas that you can adopt, cleaning upholstery on your own can be costly, a hassle and time-consuming. That is why it is best to hire a professional company like Cleaningsure to handle the cleaning of your household upholstery.