Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning · Carpet Cleaning 101 · General Home Cleaning Tips · The Gross Stuff ·Aug 26, 2022

How to Get Blood out of Carpet

Are you struggling with a carpet blood stain that refuses to budge? Are you, like the rest of us, a bit too embarrassed to ask a friend or neighbor for advice? Then look no further.

Asking for the best way to remove blood from carpets can sound a little suspicious. But from painful accidents to pets bringing in dead animals, blood stains are surprisingly common and a real pain to get rid of.

But it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools and this guide on how to get blood out of a carpet, you will have that pesky blood stain gone in no time. And you’ll know how to deal with any future ones.

What this article covers:

How To Get Dried Blood Out Of A Carpet

Whenever you are handling blood stains, it is important to always use cold water.

Contact with warm water will activate the proteins in the blood and cause them to coagulate and lock onto your carpet. It will make the cleanup process a whole lot harder.

Always use cold water!

Step 1: Remove The Dried Blood

Before bringing in the detergent or any other cleaning supplies, you will first need to scrape away any dried blood.

Use a spoon or any other blunted scraping tool and get to work on those carpet fibers. To avoid damage and bald spots on your carpets, try not to cut through any of the fibers or tug them from the carpet.

Make sure to be thorough with this step. You don’t want to skip this step and then reactivate the blood at a later stage. That will cause a stain that will be even harder to deal with than removing poop from carpets or cleaning vomit off carpets.

Step 2: Vacuum The Blood Stain

After scraping off all the dried blood on the carpet, go over the stain with a vacuum and remove all the splinters of dried blood.

Be thorough. If you have a carpet with long fibers, separate them and make sure to really get in between them. Remove all the blood that might have settled on the carpet pad.

If you don’t remove all the blood, it will later get wet and continue to stain your carpet.

how to clean blood out of carpet

Step 3: Apply A Cleaning Solution

Now that you have removed all the dry clumps of blood, it’s time to apply a cleaning solution.

You can make one at home using some common household items. Mix a cup of cold water with a cup of white vinegar. Add two tablespoons of baking soda to the vinegar and water and mix.

Next, spray this on the blood stain on your carpet and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes.

Or you can opt for carpet cleaning chemicals. They are guaranteed to remove even the toughest blood stains from carpets and are effective for other common and stubborn issues like removing old pet stains from carpets.

Step 4: Remove The Blood With A Cloth

Use a clean, white cloth to gently blot at the stain and soak up the blood and detergent. Do not rub. Only dab, hold, soak, and lift.

Always use a white cloth or paper towel to prevent any dye transfer between the cloth and carpet. It’s also recommended to work from the edge of the stain inward to prevent spreading the stain to the surrounding clean carpet.

Step 5: Rinse The Detergent

After you have removed all the blood from the carpet, get another clean cloth or paper towel and dampen it. Dab the stain with the damp cloth and remove the remaining cleaning solution.

It’s important to remove every bit of the solution, whether homemade or commercial. The same chemical reactions in detergent that make it so effective for removing human urine from carpets can cause damage when left to bleach and burn the carpet fibers.

Step 6: Let It Dry

After removing the cleaning solution, let your carpet dry. Behold your clean and fresh carpet.

how to get dried blood out of a carpet

How To Get Fresh Blood Out Of A Carpet

Step 1: Soak Up As Much Of The Blood As Possible

Find a clean white cloth and wet it with cold water before moving to your fresh blood stain.

With slow movements, gently dab up and down on the fresh blood stain. Do not rub or scrub at the stain. This will only push the blood deeper into the carpet and into the surrounding fibers.

Repeat this blotting until you have soaked up as much of the blood as possible.

After the blotting, the blood stain might be completely gone or only a light red stain. Because you caught the blood when it was still fresh, the cleaning process should be a whole lot easier.

Step 2: Apply Cleaning Solution

For the next step, apply a cleaning solution to the blood stain. Spray it on the stain and let it sit for 5 minutes. For darker stains, you can let the mixture sit for longer.

You can make a cleaning solution by combining one cup of cold water with one cup of white vinegar. Add a tablespoon of dishwashing liquid and mix.

This mixture, while effective, won’t work as well as an ammonia mixture. You can add a tablespoon of ammonia to the mixture but we recommend getting Red Action instead.

Red Action is a professional-grade ammonia cleaner that will remove a variety of tough stains including paint, food stains, wine, and ink. It will work wonderfully on the blood stain and any other future carpet stains.

Step 3: Soak Up The Blood And Cleaning Solution

With a clean wet cloth, blot on the blood stain after it has soaked for a bit. Do this until all the blood has been soaked up and transferred from the carpet to the cloth.

Always work from the edge of the stain inward to avoid spreading the stain further. It’s also important not to push too hard and risk pushing the stain deeper into the carpet.

Step 4: Rinse Solution

Take another clean cloth, wet it with cold water, and remove the cleaning solution from the carpet with dabbing motions. Do this until all the solution has been removed.

As good as ammonia solutions work, they also have a bit of an unpleasant smell. While it will go away with time, you can also use USOR Unchained, an amazing odor, and stain remover. Not only will it remove the ammonia smell, but it also works great at removing toddlers' urine from carpets and removing vomit smells from carpets.

Add your odor remover after rinsing the stain and watch the smell disappear. It is also effective at removing any stains that might have remained from the blood, especially if you used the homemade cleaning solution.

How To Get Blood Out Of A Carpet With Salt

Step 1: Create Salt Mixture

Salt is amazingly absorbent and can do wonders for removing blood stains but it will only work if the stain is still fresh and wet.

In a cup, combine equal parts of water and salt. Mix the two until you have formed a thick paste. Add more salt or water as needed.

Step 2: Apply Paste To Blood Stain

When you have gotten a thick enough consistency, apply the mixture to the blood stain. With a spoon or knife, smear the paste onto the blood stain.

Don’t spread it too thin. You want it on the thicker side to really soak up the blood.

Step 3: Let The Salt Mixture Dry

Let the salt and water paste dry on the blood stain. The time it takes will be different depending on how thick you lay it onto the carpet. But it is important to let it dry completely before moving on to the next step.

Step 4: Remove The Salt Mixture

After the salt mixture has completely dried down, you can finally move on to removing it. With a spoon, scrape off the layer of salt and water until everything has been removed.

Step 5: Vacuum Up The Salt

Use a vacuum to remove all the bits of salt. If your carpet is deep, make sure to get the salt that dropped down below.

If there is still any stain left, repeat the above steps until all the blood has been soaked up and removed. You can combine this with a carpet pre-spray for a deeper clean that is sure to remove the stain.

How To Get Blood Out Of A White Carpet

Step 1: Soak Up The Blood

For the best cleaning results on white carpets, first, you will need to soak up as much of the blood as you can.

Do this by wetting a clean white cloth with cold water and blotting on the blood stain. Make sure to only go up and down; never scrub or rub at the stain. This will only spread the blood stain and make cleaning up a whole lot harder.

Rinse the cloth and repeat this step until you have soaked up as much blood as possible.

Step 2: Apply The Cleaning Solution

With normal carpets, using a homemade cleaning solution is still a viable option. But because white carpets are so light, any stain, even the lightest one, will be immediately visible.

That’s why we recommend using BioPro to remove blood stains from white carpets. BioPro is an enzyme pre-spray and it doesn’t just clean your carpet. Instead, it breaks down the molecular structure of the blood and lifts it from the fibers for an intense clean.

Spray some of this pre-spray on your white carpet and we guarantee you will see immediate results.

For even better results, combine BioPro with Red Action, our best ammonia-based spotting chemical. Ammonia is extremely effective at removing blood and combining these two is sure to provide you with the best white carpet blood stain removal.

Step 3: Remove Cleaning Solution

After the allotted time on the above cleaning solutions, go ahead and rinse them from your carpet.

Do this by wetting a clean cloth and dabbing on your carpet. Soak up the solution, rinse the cloth thoroughly, and repeat the steps until all the solution has been removed from the carpet.

Step 4: Let Dry

After you have thoroughly removed all the cleaning solution from your white carpet, pat it dry with a clean towel or paper towels. You should now have clean, bright, and fresh white carpets.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to clean dry and fresh bloodstain, and how to get your carpets white again, you can get right to removing those blood stains from your home.

Do you want to know the best part about using any of the above-mentioned TMF products? They will work on any stains in your home. So right after removing that pesky blood stain, you can get to work on all the other stubborn stains on your carpets.

How To Get Blood Out Of A Carpet (FAQs)

What is the best way to remove blood from a carpet?

There are a variety of methods that work for effective blood removal. Besides using detergents and things like salt, ammonia, and hydrogen peroxide, your best bet would be to avoid using warm water on the blood stain.

Warm water causes blood to clot or coagulate and can make the clean-up process a whole lot harder. So whichever cleaning method you use, the best way to remove blood from a carpet would be to use the above detergents and cold water.

What is the best thing to remove blood from a carpet?

The best product for removing blood stains would be products that contain ammonia and break down enzymes. For example, Red Action and BioPro.

Red Action is an ammonia-based solvent that works great at removing not only reds but a variety of other colors. And BioPro is a pre-spray that breaks down enzymes and works as a very effective solvent for removing bloodstains.

Can you use a carpet cleaner to remove blood stains?

Of course, you can use carpet cleaning agents to remove blood stains. Blood stains are relatively easy to clean and most detergents, when used with the above steps, will have the stain out in no time.

The only cleaning agent to avoid using would be any bleaching agents. They could cause discoloration of your carpet and even severely damage the fibers.

Did you find our blog helpful? Then consider checking other guides: