Decorating your dream home is a fun way to personalize your space and make it yours. Nowadays, there are plenty of options for decorating your home, with many different types of furniture, fixtures, and carpets.
While shopping for carpet flooring, you may come across multiple brands, styles, and materials. Each material would have their own level of durability, water resistance, and stain resistance. One carpet stands out, as it provides a lush softness and vibrant colours that rivals those of nylon and polyester - Triexta.
What is Triexta?
Triexta is a relatively new type of carpet material that has been making rounds in homes only for the past few years. Originally made by the DuPont Company under the SmartStrand brand, Triexta competes with nylon and polyester carpets in terms of price point and durability.
Sorona, a brand of triexta fabric carpets, uses eco-friendly materials to create triexta. Materials include corn sugar, which is a renewable resource. Sorona makes for terrific carpet flooring for homeowners looking to reduce their carbon footprint.
Triexta rugs are known to be extremely durable, lasting for years without any signs of wear and tear. They are also water resistant, as they are oleophilic (meaning they prefer oil over water). Triexta carpets are great for families with young children and pets, and great to place in high traffic areas and rooms with high humidity.
How to Clean a Triexta Carpet
As water resistant and stain resistant triexta is, your carpet will still need proper care and maintenance to keep it in good condition. Despite maintaining a soft, plush feel even after years of stepping on them, the carpet fibers wear down over time without good upkeep.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the top three ways on how you can clean your triexta carpet. We’ll also include some DIY cleaning methods you can use to clean your triexta carpet.
1. Vacuum Cleaning
The vacuum cleaner will be your best friend in cleaning your triexta carpet. Go over your triexta carpet daily to remove any dust or dirt that may be hidden in the carpet fibers. For convenience, vacuum your triexta fiber rugs and carpets as often as you vacuum the rest of your home.
Dry Vacuum
Dry vacuuming can be done with or without a commercial carpet cleaning powder. Carpet cleaning powders attract dust particles like a magnet attracts metal, making vacuuming them up much easier. Most carpet cleaning powders are scented too, leaving a fresh scent in your newly-cleaned carpet.
Go over your triexta fiber rugs and carpets with a vacuum cleaner, making sure to go over the undisturbed corners as well as the high traffic areas. Remove the beater bar from your vacuum cleaner as this may ruffle the triexta fibers, and cause them to look frizzed.
Wet Vacuum
A good commercial carpet shampoo should bring life back to your carpet. With a vacuum cleaner on the wet setting, you can deep clean your triexta fiber carpets. Use the carpet shampoo as directed on the label, and scrub out grime from your carpets. Use the vacuum cleaner on the wet setting to suck up excess moisture before allowing the carpet to air dry.
A consistent routine of deep cleaning your triexta carpets can provide some stain resistant protection, as you remove the dirt and spills before they settle into stains. Make sure to allow the carpet to completely dry before using, to prevent the growth of mold and mildew.
2. Spot Cleaning
More often than not, you may not need to do a deep clean of your carpet. If you find isolated areas where stains or dirt particles are located, you may get away with doing a spot cleaning instead. Spot cleaning can save you time and effort, as you don’t need to bring out heavy cleaning equipment.
Use a commercial carpet cleaner meant for spot cleaning to remove stains. Gently blot the stained area with a soft cloth or towel dipped in spot cleaning solution until the stain is removed. You may need to use a few applications for heavier stains.
3. Steam Cleaning
Triexta is a hardy material, and can withstand short periods of extreme heat. Whereas nylon and polyester carpets may melt under the heat of a steam cleaner, triexta carpets greatly benefit from a steam carpet cleaning. Go over the entire area of the carpet using the steam cleaner, making sure to avoid over-saturating the carpet.
Most steam cleaners come with a carpet shampoo or cleaning solution to use with the appliance. Make sure to read the manufacturer’s instructions before you start steam cleaning your triexta carpet. When in doubt, call for professional carpet cleaners to steam clean your triexta carpets.
4. DIY Methods
Triexta is a forgiving material, and DIY cleaning solutions work great on triexta carpet flooring. Homemade cleaners are both effective and inexpensive, and ingredients for the cleaning solutions are usually already home staples. Homemade cleaning solutions are also safer for your family, as they pose negligible or no harm to your kids and pets.
Since triexta fiber rugs and carpets are ideal for kids’ rooms and pet areas, you may benefit from using homemade cleaning solutions instead of commercial ones, as homemade solutions are often milder on the skin, and don’t contain harmful chemicals that can be hazardous when ingested.
Baking Soda Refresher
Baking soda is a known deodorizer, as it neutralizes any unpleasant odour from spaces, surfaces, and fabrics.
- Sprinkle baking soda around your triexta carpet, rubbing the powder onto each individual fiber.
- Let the baking soda sit for half an hour to an hour for the powder to do its job.
- Shake off excess powder or use the vacuum cleaner to remove the baking soda.
For a level up in your DIY carpet refresher, add a few drops of your preferred essential oil into the baking soda powder before you sprinkle it onto the triexta fiber carpets.
Note: Triexta is attracted to oil, so use essential oils sparingly to avoid retaining oils in your carpets.
Dish Soap Degreaser
Because triexta fiber is oleophilic, meaning the material is attracted to oil, accidental food spills can cause grease to be trapped in the triexta fibers.
- Mix together a few tablespoons of dish soap, like Dawn Dish Soap, and warm water.
- Blot the solution into your triexta carpets using a soft cloth or sponge until the stain is gone.
Using the dish soap solution to regularly clean your triexta carpets is also a good method for oil and grease stain resistance. Simply switch out carpet shampoo for the diluted dish soap solution and use it to clean your triexta fiber rugs and carpets.
Keeping Your Triexta Carpet Clean
Triexta is a low maintenance material perfect to use as carpeting in any home. Triexta carpets make perfect additions to rooms for children and pets, as well as in high traffic areas like staircases, living rooms, and dens.
Still, you will need to know how to properly care for your triexta carpet, and you can follow these general tips on keeping your triexta carpet clean to minimize the frequency of having the clean it:
- Wipe away all spills immediately to prevent the liquid from getting into the carpet fibers.
- Sweep up dirt particles that make their way into the carpet.
- Keep your carpet stain resistant by using water repellent sprays.
- Avoid using oil-based scent diffusers around your triexta carpets as the aromatherapy oils may seep into the carpet or rug fibers.
- Prevent excess moisture from leaking into your carpet to avoid mold and mildew growth.
- Don’t step onto your carpets and rugs using your outside shoes to prevent bringing in dirt, germs, and microbes from outside.
- Disinfect your rugs and carpets daily.
- Have your carpet professionally cleaned at least once every six months.
- Have your rooms deep cleaned to prevent dust from falling onto your carpeted flooring.
Call the Professionals
Since triexta carpet flooring is a relatively new type of material compared to polyester and nylon, not all professional carpet cleaning services will know how to clean triexta fabric. Without proper cleaning knowledge, you may end up with a damaged carpet instead of a clean one, so best to find a professional carpet cleaning service that can clean triexta carpet flooring properly.
At Luce SG, we’ve seen it all: wool, nylon, polyester, acrylic, and even triexta. Though a new material, triexta carpet flooring is not something we haven’t tackled before. Call us today or send us an email and we can book you a schedule that works for you.
While you’re at it, make sure to check out our article on cleaning tips and tricks!
