If you’re trying to sell your home or a listing you have then you know how important it is for the home to look spotless and as clean as possible within all facets of cleanliness. No potential homebuyer wants to come into a listing and see dirty floors or countertops, because showings of all types are meant to let the potential buyers envision themselves and their families in the listing. When there are remnants of any dirtiness or human activity at all it can sometimes be detrimental.

Of course having furniture and other organization can help people envision how they would set up a listing, but cleanliness is always going to be a crucial aspect for all realtors and sellers. One aspect of cleaning that a lot of realtors and sellers neglect is carpet cleaning, and there’s no doubt about it that carpet cleaning is tedious but it does make a big difference. Buyers don’t want to necessarily have to deal with completely cleaning out carpets on their own, although it’s typical that carpets are cleaned after closings too.

But if you want to sell a listing then it can make a HUGE difference if you go about your own carpet cleaning, which is why we’ve compiled this list of 5 professional carpet cleaning techniques that you can incorporate to help sell your listings faster!

Hot Water Extraction Cleaning

This is also known as steam carpet cleaning, and it utilizes high pressured hot water to get deep into carpet fibers and dissolve any kind of dirt deep within the carpet. You usually are going to need a good cleaning agent to go along with the extraction through high-powered brushes. Once the carpet has been cleaned the agent will start to settle in and you can let it dry out over a short period of time.

About 3,000 square feet of carpet will take roughly 2 or more hours to clean thoroughly in this process, and it will take at least 4 hours to dry if you clean this way. A lot of professionals will do this type of cleaning in the late afternoon so the carpets can be left to dry over night.

Carpet Shampooing

This is what a lot of companies would do for a long time until encapsulation technologies came around in the early 1970s, but this technique is great when it comes to getting rid of really bad stains, like wine or other pesky stains that simply won’t come out. The main disadvantage that is associated with this technique is the drying period that is considerably longer than some other techniques, but that’s because you’ll be using more water and foamy liquid.

Encapsulation

The use of foam encapsulation is really interesting because it utilizes synthetic detergents that end up crystallizing into a powder in order to encapsulate dirt particles in the carpet fibers. So the dirt fibers are stuck in these tiny encapsulations within the fibers of the carpet, and once the carpet is dry you can vacuum and see incredible results.

For the most part, this type of carpet cleaning has overtaken carpet shampooing within the professional fields, and it’s definitely something that all realtors should consider for their listings too because of its effectiveness and shorter drying period. You can also make sure to use environmentally friendly cleaning agents within this type of process.

The one drawback to this type of carpet cleaning is that it’s not going to be quite as effective as some other strategies when it comes to cleaning out really pesky stains like wine stains, and this is simply because of the innate limitations associated with the technology.

Bonnet Cleaning

For the most part, this is a great way to clean the surface of carpets because it will predominately focus on the top layers of carpet fibers. This cleaning process will entail some pretty heavy machinery and cleaning solution to ultimately absorb dirt from carpets, but it won’t be able to get extremely deep.

It can be considered a quick fix solution, which is why a lot of hotels use this method when they have to clean out a certain area where a lot of people are walking. This helps hotels because this process uses very little moisture and dries really quickly, which are also great pros for realtors and listings too!

It’s not going to deeply clean out carpets, so if you use this process it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if dirt resurfaces after a couple months or so. Another drawback to this cleaning technique is that it can potentially push some dirt deeper into a carpet and make it harder to get out later on.

Dry Carpet Cleaning

This is one of the most recent technological advances in the carpet cleaning industry within the past few years, and it’s definitely gaining popularity amongst some of the top professionals in the field, including realtors everywhere.

This actually was originated in the 80s, but since then there have been a whole array of powders and cleaning compounds that have been utilized within the market to make it a much more effective cleaning process. What’s important to know about this cleaning technique is that it will get cleaning products into the very bottom parts of the carpet through the use of rotating brush machines that open up carpet fibers. This will result in very thoroughly cleaned carpets and brand-new looks.