A single flight of carpeted stairs in a North Jersey home. The carpet is a woven two tone, with bands of oatmeal alternating with bands of blue grey, and the pale bands had gone orange brown with traffic soil. The staircase was cleaned by hot water extraction and finished by hand.
What the first photograph shows
The first photograph was taken after the work had started, so the extraction hose is visible across the treads. The carpet in it had not been cleaned yet, which is why it still serves as the comparison.
In the first photograph the oatmeal bands read orange brown and blotchy from traffic soil. In the second the same carpet reads evenly and the banding shows as the pattern again. That is the change between the two photographs.
What we did
- Cleaned the flight by hot water extraction, with heated solution injected into the pile and drawn back out through the same head in one pass.
- Worked the whole staircase by hand, because no machine head sits flat on a stair tread.
- Cleaned three faces on every step: the tread, the riser and the carpeted stringer at the side.
- Started at the bottom step and worked upward, so any soil released fell onto a step still waiting to be cleaned.
- Photographed the finished staircase after the work.
Why do carpeted stairs take longer than a room?
A staircase holds more carpet than most people expect and none of it is flat. Every step has three faces, each at a different angle, and all of them are reached by kneeling. A room of the same square footage is cleaned with a wand in straight lines.
A staircase is also the one carpet in a house that is seen from directly above, at eye level, so the result shows there more clearly than anywhere else.
What you should know
- The weave makes the change easy to see. Soil that settles evenly across a plain carpet can pass for the color of the carpet. Set a pale oatmeal band beside a darker blue grey one and the soil shows.
- Carpet is normally dry within hours in warm weather and takes longer in winter. That applies to carpet cleaning in general.
- Both photographs are unretouched, cropped and resized only, with no color grade and no filter.
- The cause of the soiling is not recorded for this job. What the two photographs show is traffic soil at the base of the pile being removed.
- You receive a written estimate before any work begins. All services are performed at your home or business, and appointments are available 24 hours a day.
When to call us
Call when the stairs look grey from the landing, or when the treads have gone a shade darker than the carpet above and below them. The method and its limits are set out on Carpet cleaning. We cover eight counties across North Jersey and Central Jersey, including Bergen County and Essex County. More completed work is on Before and after.
