How to Remove Wax From Carpet (Because You Can't Have Anything Nice)

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I finally got a carpet for my living room, ergo, I spilled something on my new carpet. In this case I had owned the carpet for 16 hours and it was liquid candle wax.

The rug I got is just a cheap one from Ikea to put in my living room. It's the same as every other natural fibre type carpet you've seen around lately.

Best of all, It doesn't detract from the living room's focal point - my 13 year old, mismatched armed, partial, sectional sofa made out of unflippable cushions and craft glue.

I threw an entire section from it onto my front lawn in a fit of rage just before Christmas, as one does.

Within 16 hours of bringing the rug into my house and laying it down, an entire melted candle spilled onto it.

Because like my mother before me, I GUESS I JUST CAN'T HAVE ANYTHING NICE, (dramatic pause, exit stage left away from the broken Royal Doulton and towards the Creme de Menthe).

It was him. ☝🏻 Philip did it. More specifically it was Silly Philly.

I've always known about the trick of using an iron and a cloth to remove spilled wax from carpet so I thought this was a great chance to test it out and report back.

How to Clean Wax Out of a Carpet with An Iron

According to the Internet you can use an old rag or towel or paper towels to soak up the spill by ironing it.

The heat from the iron, melts the wax, which allows it to be absorbed by the towel/paper towel.

Turn the steam OFF of your iron if it has it. Select heat setting appropriate for your rug. (synthetic carpets will melt with high heat)

Place a cloth or paper towel over the wax to absorb it as the heat from the iron melts it.

Problem. It didn't work. At all.

I thought the method should work, so I switched from a terry cloth hand towel to paper towels.

Lay paper towel down and iron. You can immediately see the wax seeping into the paper towel which is obviously very satisfying.

2. Using whatever you can, push the paper towel into the carpet fibres, cracks and crevices. (I used my fingers and a crumb roller!)

3. Better. The paper towel and iron did pick up a fair amount of wax but no matter how long I did it for it just wouldn't remove all of the wax.

4. Let's add baking soda. I sprinkled the area with baking soda and left it for 24 hours before vacuuming. The result was perfect.

That was the trick. The baking soda finished the job. No stain is visible at all anymore.

BEFORE

AFTER

For any of you wandering through from Google or elsewhere I should explain that everything I do or recommend is based on real life experience.

That means you can look at the above photos and know it's real, not Photoshopped and *should* work for you as well.

CONCLUSION:

The method of using an iron to remove wax off of a carpet works to some extent. I think it would work well on some carpets and not so well on others, like mine.

Finish up with by letting a layer of baking soda sit for 24 hours before vacuuming it all up.

Just for fun, because, I like fun - I've started a carpet diary which I will reveal at the end of the year.

Within the first week of putting the carpet down I had spilled candle wax, half of a Diet Coke and a full coffee with cream on it.

One week.

I'm very spilly. I expect my rug spills calendar will be WAY more populated than my social calendar.

Which should serve as a bit of an explanation as to why I still own my pretty damn ugly, microfibre 13 year old partial sectional sofa. A few years ago I upended a full bowl of pumpkin & apple soup while sitting on it.

You're not going to believe me but it jumped right out of my hand. It really did.

And yet it wiped off as though my sofa was made out of teflon and magic. Because even though microfibre is uglier than say, linen or velvet ... it's also indestructible.

Yet again proving ... I guess I just can't have nice things.