Carpet Cleaners Buying Guide
While today's carpets resist stains and soiling better than ever, no carpet is fully stain-proof. Professional cleaning, recommended
every 12 to 18 months, does the best job, but can be expensive. Rental machines are also available. If you want to buy your
own, use this carpet cleaner guide.
Getting started
Regular vacuum cleaners remove loose dirt, but they hardly touch the dirt and oils that stick to carpet fibers. Deep-cleaners are supposed to go a step further: They typically spray on a detergent, sometimes working it in with moving brushes. Extractors then vacuum up the dirty solution. With rug shampooers or other scrubbers, you wait until the carpet is dry, then use a regular vacuum cleaner to pick up the residue and fluff the pile.
A machine's effectiveness depends in part on how aggressively it scrubs to loosen dirt and how powerfully its suction pulls dirt in. But too much aggressiveness could damage carpeting. (Powerful suction doesn't pose such a problem.) In fact, "deep-cleaner" is something of a misnomer. The machines we've tested don't get at dirt at the bottom of a carpet, but instead they remove mainly what you see near the surface. Remember, too, that the do-it-yourself machines aren't stain removers. It's better to go after stains with specific cleansers, and tackle spills as soon as they happen.
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