Everyone loves the warm and intimate ambience that candlelight provides, that is until wax drips all over the rug. Knowing how to get wax out of a carpet is a must for anyone who loves entertaining—or who lives in an area prone to blackouts. Fortunately, the removal process is easy and uses materials you already have at home, from paper towels to ice. As long as you tackle the problem right away, you’ll be able to get your rug spotless and wax-free. Read on to learn how to get candle wax out of carpets so you can rest easy and light those votives at your next party.
1. Gather your materials.
First things first: ready your supplies. To remove wax from carpet, you'll need the following on hand:
Bag of ice or an ice pack
Iron (a hairdryer can work in a pinch)
Paper towel, terry-cloth towel, or brown paper bag
Carpet cleaner or rubbing alcohol
Butter knife or other dull knife
Vacuum
2. Freeze the wax.
Place a plastic bag of ice cubes, an ice pack or even frozen meat on the wax. You may want to wrap the bag or pack in a towel so the wax doesn’t get wet. The goal here is to get the wax as cold as possible so the wax will solidify and lift up from the carpet fibres more easily.
3. Scrape the wax off.
Once the wax stain is frozen, use your knife to scrape off as much of the wax as you can. If you're lucky, you'll be able to remove all the wax with just the knife, and in that case, you can skip straight to step five. If, however, there's remaining wax, you head to step four.
4. Prepare and iron the stain.
Place a paper towel, terry-cloth towel, or paper bag on top of the wax stain. Grab your iron and turn it on at a low temperature. This is important because if the iron is too hot, the fibres of your carpet can melt! Stick to a low temperature and do not use a steam setting. Slowly rub the iron over the towel or bag, which will absorb the wax-like magic. Keep repositioning the towel or bag on fresh areas and repeat until all the wax has been absorbed.
5. Clean the carpet.
Now, onto the carpet cleaning. Get any remaining bits of wax or dye stains out of the rug with a commercial cleaning solution or rubbing alcohol. Blot with a clean white cloth until the stains are gone. Blot the carpet until the moisture is gone.
6. Vacuum the carpet.
Once the carpet is dry, you can restore the texture of your carpet by vacuuming it with an upholstery brush attachment. Good as new! It's as if the wax stain never happened. Turns out, getting the wax out of carpet is a lot easier than you might of thought! You can even remove wax from fabric, too, following the same method of icing the wax and then scraping it off.
