How to clean nail polish out of carpet is probably the question I dread the most from my readers, which is why I’m just now getting to it. I’m totally confident in my ability to get most things out of carpet but nail polish is the one thing I’ve never had experience with. However after figuring out how to get nail polish off hardwood floors, I was feeling a little more confident and I thought I’d give it a try!
I decided painting nail polish on the carpet in the house wasn’t a great idea so I cut a piece from the left over carpet in the garage. Because I have white carpets I thought, “why not paint them with bright pink, professional-quality nail polish?” I painted 3 stripes and then “spilled” it on one section to really let the polish get deep into the fibers.
After letting the polish completely dry on the carpet I tested 2 of my favorite carpet cleaners: Woolite Pet + Oxygen and Oreck Stain Remover. Both took a lot of the color off but required a lot of scrubbing. I didn’t want to scrub too hard because I didn’t want to make the carpet look shaggy and worn. Next I tried De-Solv-It since it had taken a lot of the color off the wood flooring, however it’s pretty greasy so I’m not sure if I’d really want to put this on my carpet. Here are the results after testing those three products. Good, but not great.
Next I decided to try rubbing alcohol because it was the magic product that got the fingernail polish off the wood flooring. I poured a very small amount of rubbing alcohol over the spot where I had “spilled’ the polish and right away I noticed a difference. With a bit of scrubbing, with a wet rag, the rubbing alcohol took most of the color out of the carpet, however there was still some color in the deep fibers of the carpet. I sprayed it with a little Woolite Pet+Oxygen and scrubbed a little more and these were the results.
Not perfect but pretty dang good, much better than the other 3 products!
I tried adding a little more rubbing alcohol, and a bit more scrubbing but the remaining color wouldn’t budge. There were only a few carpet fibers that were still stained so I took the piece of carpet in the house and did what any OCD person would do, I cut them out. Yep, that’s right, I cut the remaining pink fibers out of the carpet. There weren’t a lot, just a few but it’s what made the difference between a slightly pink spot on my carpet and a perfectly white corner of carpet!
When I cut them out I made sure to cut each piece at a different length so that the missing pieces would still blend with the remaining fibers around the spot. I tried to cut right under where the pink stain stopped. Here are the results.
Perfect. You can’t even tell there was ever nail polish there! I’m sure many of you are thinking “I could never cut my carpet!” but to calm your fears I want to reassure you that you’ll never notice. After cutting the pieces out I ruffled the carpet with my finger and couldn’t even see where I had cut them out. If it’s not obvious on a small scrap of carpet like this one, I promise you’ll never see it in a large room.
Not that I want anyone to spill nail polish on my carpet but I will say that I feel more confident now that I know how to get it out!
About Anna
I’m curious why you didn’t try acetone nail polish remover?
I didn’t have any. :)
Only one problem. I have berber carpet, so cutting is not an option. To be real honest I had a giant streak of red polish on my white berber years ago, and after trying everything else I did end up cutting. There is a definite “indention” now in my carpet, but I decided it looked better than the red stain… (Most people probably never notice.)
My 2 year old just spilled nail polish on the carpet a couple of days ago- I poured a bunch of nail polish remover on it but it really smeared it out. Using a baby wipe my 2 year spend the next 10 minutes cleaning it and it came out!! Amazing what a little elbow grease will do- and it was so sweet to see him cleaning up his own mess!
When my daughter dripped nail polish on my living room carpet, I soaked a Q-tip in acetone nail-polish remover and dabbed, dabbed, dabbed. It removed the stain completely. I would dab with the Q-tip, then blot with a clean white towel. Once it was gone, I used a fresh white towel with water to rinse out the acetone. Worked perfectly!
I’ll be trying this out tomorrow! I wonder how it will work on older stains? My three year old decided to paint his toenails last month…..I have a nice big pink spot on my carpet.
In reference to the earlier commenter, I tried acetone and it got quite a bit of the color out, but it’s still very noticeable. I’m hoping the rubbing alcohol will help fade it further!
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Most of us don’t have white carpet :) Would the rubbing alcohol take color out of colored carpet?
Nope! You’re good to go, even with colored carpet. :)
Anna
Thanks for providing such a useful information of removing nail polish from carpet. But I have tried nail paint remover for removing the stain out from any fabric and it works for me.
I spilled bright red nail polish on my very light colored carpet this morning. First tried using acetone, and that made it a lot worse! After reading this I went out and bought rubbing alcohol and Woolite, and I also bought Lestoil which my mom always used on tough stains. I put rubbing alcohol and scrubbed. Then I tried the Lestoil (because I am more familiar with it, also it is cheaper). I let it sit for a few minutes, and then really scrubbed, and the stain is nearly gone. My carpets are almost white, and you can only detect the stain if you get really close and know where to look.
just used this technique (rubbing alcohol) on a dried nail polish stain. though I’m an adult, apparently I can’t paint my nails without spills…haha. And in a rental apartment? it needed to come out. and it did!! thanks!