General Home Cleaning Tips · Hard Wood Floor Cleaning · The Gross Stuff ·Mar 02, 2023

How to Get Cat Pee Smell Out of Wood

Ever wondered what the essential part of cleaning a cat urine stain is?

When your feline companion has an accident, your first reaction is probably to clean the area as best you can. But many people neglect to properly deal with the associated odors.

Yes, removing pee stains from wood floors and furniture is important but you also need to ensure that you properly get rid of the smell.

Not only for hygienic purposes but also to prevent your cat from returning to the same spot repeatedly.

Luckily, we are here to give you all the details. In this comprehensive guide, we will show you exactly how to remove that cat urine smell from wood furniture and floors.

How to Get Cat Urine Smell Out of Wood

Step 1: Aerate the Room

Before cleaning, it is a good idea to get some air into the room where the cat urine smell is lingering.

In fact, this step is important when dealing with any pet accident and can even help get poop smell out of wood.

Open some windows or put some fans on to help the airflow along.

After this step, the room will already start to smell fresher. It will also eliminate any floating urine particles.

Step 2: Blot & Spot Clean

After ventilating the area, you should address the stained area. If there is still some wet urine, you want to use paper towels to get gently blot up as much of it as you can.

This is important if you don’t want it to penetrate deep into the floor, which means you will have to get the pet urine out of your subfloor at a later stage.

Then, grab your favorite hardwood or wood cleaner and clean the area as you normally would. This is where most people stop the process of getting rid of cat urine on wood floors, which leads to the lingering smell of urine.

how to get cat urine smell out of wood

But directly addressing the smell is very important, even when removing dog urine stains from wood.

Step 3: Get Rid of the Odor

The ammonia in cat urine and its high acidity is the reason for the smell that accompanies this type of stain. This is the same reason why it is so hard to get the rat pee smell out of wood.

Luckily, there are a couple of foolproof approaches for removing the bad odor from wood floors and furniture.

Method 1: Enzymatic Cleaners

When cleaning up pet stains, it is wise to turn to professional carpet and floor cleaning chemicals.

For this purpose, certain enzymatic cleaners are designed to eliminate urine odors in their entirety.

This is the number one approach for dealing with any pet stain and eliminating the urine smell from wood furniture and wooden floors.

Most products simply require you to spray them directly onto the stained area. You can place a weighty object on top of the stain to ensure that it penetrates deep into the stain as well.

In most cases, you will have to leave it to set for at least 15 minutes.

Method 2: Vinegar and Baking Soda

The next method requires vinegar and baking soda, which most people have on hand. This makes it a versatile option for dealing with pet odors.

Start by sprinkling the affected area with baking soda. Be generous and ensure that the stain is adequately coated.

Let this sit for about ten minutes. Then, pour some vinegar directly onto the baking soda and watch it bubble up to the surface.

how to get cat pee smell out of floor

If you don’t have vinegar, you can pour baking soda directly onto the stain and leave it overnight.

You can also make a paste with baking soda and water and cover the stain with it. It may not involve a bubbling process, but sometimes baking soda alone is good enough to deal with the lingering urine smell effectively.

Method 3: Vinegar and Water

If you don’t have baking soda on hand, you can use a mixture of white vinegar and water. Simply mix equal parts vinegar and water and spray it directly onto the stained area.

You can also blot the stain with this solution.

For tough stains, such as older dried stains, you may want to soak the affected area with this solution.

You can either spray it down and weigh it down to ensure that it soaks or soak a towel in this solution and place the soaked towel over the stained area.

A variation of this method requires mixing a cup of vinegar into a bucket of warm water and adding some grapefruit oil to it. This is particularly popular for wooden floors.

how to remove cat urine stains from wood floors

Another option is mixing the vinegar with dish detergent to the ratio of 75% dish soap and 25% vinegar and adding this to an equal part of warm water.

Method 4: Dish Detergent and Club Soda

Another popular home remedy involves dish detergent and club soda. Start by soaking the area with water mixed with a few drops of dish detergent.

Let this sit for a while (about two hours), and blot up the cleaning solution.

Then rinse the area with cold water and soak it with club soda for a further 10 minutes. Leave it to dry overnight.

Method 5: Hydrogen Peroxide

The last method we will discuss is Hydrogen Peroxide. This is a powerful home remedy that is perfect for tougher stains.

But, it can have a bleaching effect on wooden furniture and floors so we highly recommend testing it on an area of the floor first before using it to clean the pet stain.

Pour or spray the Hydrogen Peroxide onto the stained area. Or you can soak a cloth in Hydrogen Peroxide and place it over the stain.

Keep it in place with a weighty object. Leave it overnight.

best way to get rid of cat urine smell from wood floors

A variation of this method requires a mixture of 2 cups of Hydrogen Peroxide and 2 tablespoons of dish detergent.

Mix it up in a spray bottle and spray the stain with it. Leave it for one minute, and then scrub it gently with a soft-bristled brush.

Step 3: Rinse

Whatever cleaning solution you choose, it is always best to rinse the area afterward to get rid of any remnants of the cleaning solution that may still be there.

For urine stains, it may be wise to use cold water. And since the stain is on wood, you want to ensure that you don’t introduce too much moisture during this step.

It may be helpful to dampen a cloth and slowly wipe away the area until you are sure all the cleaning solution has been removed.

removing cat urine odor from hardwood floors

If you use a powdered cleaning solution, such as baking soda, you will also need to vacuum the area thoroughly to ensure all the particles are removed.

After rinsing the area, you can leave it to dry overnight. You can speed up this process by turning on fans and introducing ventilation into the room. It may be helpful to open some windows as well.

Conclusion

Pet stains are not the end of the world. But their smells can be hard to get rid of. This will lead to increasing frustration and might even mean that your pet returns to the same area to leave its mark.

So, eliminating the smell of cat urine is an integral part of cleaning up after your pet has had an accident.