Is Professional Carpet Cleaning Worth the Cost?

EOD_CarpetCleanPicAs we reach the 12 year mark since we built our home, we find things are starting to show signs of wear, and a possible need for replacement. On the top of that list is the carpeting. With two cats and two children that have grown up within the walls of the house, there are spots in every room and the stairs were a disaster.

We clean the main rooms of our home once a year on average using a carpet cleaner we purchased at Walmart. It does a decent job, but it won’t get out really tough stains, and it’s nearly impossible to clean stairs.

The carpeting in our home was showing severe signs of wear, and we needed to do something.

My wife and I explored having the carpeting in our home replaced. We obtained estimates from two different carpet retailers for both partial and full replacement of the carpet in our home. The estimates ranged from several thousand dollars for replacement of the most worn areas to over $12,000 for replacement of every square foot of carpet in our home.

We were shocked at what it would cost to replace the carpet in our home.

We weren’t prepared to spend that much money on carpeting. We decided to have our carpeting professionally cleaned to see if we could prolong the life of our carpeting. We contracted a local carpet cleaning service to clean our hall way, stairs, two living areas and a downstairs recreation room. Basically everything but our bedrooms. We weren’t exactly sure what to expect since we had never had our carpet cleaned by someone else.

Here are a few of the highlights of our carpet cleaning experience:

Expect To Move Your Stuff

Professional carpet cleaners clean carpet, they do not want to have to mess with your stuff. My wife and I moved everything we could the rooms not being cleaned, or the kitchen and dining room. Anything that couldn’t be moved to those spaces was moved to one side of room. I expected to then have to move my stuff to the other side of the room so he could finish the job. However, he said he was use to moving a few pieces of furniture in each room from one side to the other as long as it wasn’t excessive.

Point Out Tough Spots

The cleaner had special spot removing detergent that he sprayed immediately on tough spots such as paint from a teenage face painting party. Telling the cleaner up front allowed him to give those spots extra attention.

The Cleaning is Fast

When I clean my own carpets, it takes a couple of hours for each room as I’m constantly having to stop to empty/refill the water tank. A professional cleaning service will run a hose into your home that constantly feeds the cleaning unit, and removes the excess water. It took the cleaner about 2.5 hours to do the cleaning.

Stairs Are A Breeze

The cleaner’s professional grade tool worked on both vertical and horizontal services, and it did a GREAT job. In addition to having a ton of stains and spots, our stairs just looked dirty. After the cleaning they looked spectacular.

Expect Great Results

We were really close to pulling the trigger on spending thousands and thousands of dollars to either partially or fully replace our carpet. The professional cleaning left our carpet looking clean and refreshed. I think we can get several more years of life out of our carpet, delaying the expensive venture of replacing our carpet.

Not Every Spot Will Come Out

Professional carpet cleaners will make your carpet look great again, but not every stain will come out. Some of those face painting stains, as well as some mystery black spots did not come out.

Expect To Wait To Put Your House Back Together

Drying time for the carpet was about 4-6 hours. The cleaner was at our house at 1:30, was gone a little after 4, and we had all our stuff moved back by 9pm.

To have 75% (estimation) of the carpet cleaned in our home, we paid $241. Our carpet looks fantastic. I couldn’t stop walking around our home in amazement at how good our carpet looked. Gone were all the cat and dirt spots. In fact it looked so good, that I was almost embarrassed at how bad we had let it get. As soon as the cleaner left we agreed that we would have them come back in the summer and do our bedrooms as well.

Eventually we’ll have to shell out some major cash to replace our carpet, but we were able to extend the life of our carpet with an inexpensive professional cleaning. The cleaner even mentioned that our carpet was in good shape, but just needed cleaning. We had wondered whether the professional cleaning would be worth the money, but after seeing the results, we definitely made the right choice.

Have you ever had your carpets professionally cleaned? What where your results?

About Travis

12 Responses to “Is Professional Carpet Cleaning Worth the Cost?”

Read below or add a comment...

  1. Money Beagle says:

    One of the things to be prepared for is that some stains will come back. If the stain has worked its way down to the padding, then it will likely reappear at some point. There’s no getting around that, and it’s not the fault of the cleaner.

  2. We have thought about using a service to clean our carpets but it is hard to decide because our daughter is so young that we expect her to continue to spill things on the carpet so it might not be worth it now. However we might look at cleaning instead of replacing in a couple years!

    • Travis says:

      Things are always going to get spilled…..I think it’s worth having them cleaned periodically though – whether it’s professionally or on my own.

  3. Christen says:

    12 years is a long time really and I can imagine a home with kids and you have two cats too so surely there might be many a times accidental spills of ink, food and other stuffs especially on the carpet. Cat hairs also get into the carpets and thus regular carpet cleaning is one of the essential things in a home that have pets. A professional can clean you carpet removing the hidden stains and grimes including pet hairs.
    Regular carpet cleaning definitely prolongs the life of a carpet and it’s as simple as either you get your carpet clean for a healthy environment in your home that will definitely cut costs related to allergies or either you have to buy a new carpet or look for options of partial replacements. Definitely if the stains are very old then it might happen that they won’t disappear completely so it’s better to take some tips from your carpet professional on how to take care of fresh stains on the carpet as per your carpet type with some home remedies or a eco friendly cleaning solution.

  4. Nathan says:

    Great post here Travis, I have to agree with you 100% on being able to save 1000’s of dollars by opting out of replacing your carpets completely and extending the life of your carpet by hiring a professional carpet cleaning company.

    I make sure to let all my customers know about what you mentioned in this post.
    Thanks for sharing!

  5. Twyla lewis says:

    Well I’m so glad to come across this article I’ve debated the last month on having my home professionally cleaned for years I’ve just bought my own cleaner for the most part I believe I’ve done a decent job lol. Well I’ve been my be home a year now and beige colored carpeting just never seems to get as clean as I’d like so I hired a company to come out Saturday figured instead of using my machine or renting One a cleaning is needed and I’ll maintain it until next year thank you writing the article I was debating on cancelling the appointment but now I can’t wait

  6. Angel Kyle says:

    Carpet is one of the best flooring option, but you should keep clean the carpet. And it is the best option if you take the help of a professional carpet cleaner. As they know which cleaning product is good. They also clean the carpet within short time. So that the durability of the carpet should be maintained. They also suggest new technology for carpet cleaning. And in your blog you really give the best carpet cleaning tips and that’s really helpful to others.

  7. $12,000 for spending on carpet cleaning is too for any person. Then you took the right decision to call a carpet cleaner its saves you lots of money. besides carpet cleaning service you can use many other methods to clean carpet. yeah, although using some home solutions or other cleaning methods there’s always stay some spots.

Leave a Comment...

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.