Cleaning/removing wax from carpet

Question

Someone has spilled hot candle wax on the carpet again. How can I remove it?

Vacuuming doesn't seem to work, it breaks up the wax a bit, but not enough to pull it free from the carpet fibers and I would rather not have to rent a steam cleaner.

Answer 1

There are two ways that I've found to remove wax from a carpet.

Before using either method try scrape off and pick up any large clumps of wax from the surface of the carpet.

The iron method:

1. Preheat your iron on a lower setting, if your iron has a setting for synthetic fabrics use it.
2. Place a few (2-4) layers of paper towel over the wax spot.
3. Gently place the iron on the paper towel.
   • Try not to press down or rub too much, you don't want the wax to further embed in the carpet. Think blotting not scrubbing.
4. After about 5-10 seconds pick up the iron.
   • You should see that some of the wax has melted and absorbed into the paper towel, if not put the iron back on for a couple more seconds.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you've melted and blotted up all of the wax.

The coffee maker and shop vac method:

1. Use a coffee maker to heat water.
   • Add water to coffee maker as usual and turn it on, just don't add coffee grounds.
   • Depending on the type of wax you may need water that is hotter than your coffee maker can provide, in this case heat the water in a kettle or microwave, just be sure that the water isn't at a rolling boil to avoid damaging the carpet.
2. Pour hot water on the wax to melt/soften it.
3. Quickly extract, or suck up, the hot water and melted wax with the shop vac.
   • It is important to be quick here. Have your shop vac on and ready before pouring the hot water. If you're too slow the water will cool and the wax will set.

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It is probably worth mentioning that these methods also work for removing deodorant and other wax like stuff from carpets.