Home carpet steam cleaner comes really handy when you have annoying dark spots appearing on your carpet. These are especially visible when your carpet is white, off white, or any other light color. It is really hard to tell sometimes what caused the stains. But they are there, staring you in the face. So you decided to get a carpet cleaning machine that uses hot steam as your cleaning solution.

So how to use a carpet steam cleaner to get rid of the stains? We'll talk about a few steps you need to take in order to maximize the effect of your carpet cleaning, and to make sure we are doing it safely. After all, we are dealing here with some really hot steam coming out of the steamer's nozzle.

The steps we'll talk about are: Preparation of your space, vacuuming of the space, carpet steaming, and drying off.

Preparation of the room for steam cleaning

One of the most important things you want to do before using a home carpet cleaner is to prepare your space. It always looks simple when you see steam carpet cleaners operate on TV, and for some reason, they always show straight, unobstructed carpets, with no chairs, no tables, no desks, no wires, on them.

That is not what you will encounter though. Your house is a living, breathing organism, it seems. It changes day by day. If you have kids, there are toys all over the carpet. If you live or work in your room, you will have papers, magazines, waste baskets, chairs, and many other items placed on the carpet. So it becomes important that you prepare your space first by temporarily placing these object somewhere else.

Vacuuming of the room

If you are new to using steam carpet cleaners, you will soon realize that steaming is the easy part of it, but the removing of the steamed-out dirt is the important part. To make your job easier, remove all dirt that a simple regular vacuum can remove. So vacuum your carpet and upholstery first. A careful inspection during vacuuming will also help you detect the spots that need special attention during steaming - any stains you were not aware of. On the other hand, you will also find what areas of the room will not need extensive steam cleaning.

Carpet steaming

Now you are ready for carpet steaming. To start, attach the lance and brush onto the nozzle. Turn on the steam, and make sure the steam is coming out strong. Pre-treat the stained parts by spewing some hot steam on them. Then attach the micro fibre pad onto the brush and simply swipe over the carpet as you would with a normal vacuum cleaner. Keep in mind that, since the micro fibre pad is the only way you get the dirt off the carpet, you may have to replace the micro fibre frequently. Get a good supply and keep it handy. Depending on your preference, you can get reusable micro fibre pads which you can clean with the rest of your laundry, or you can get single use. Your pick.

Drying the carpet off

Finally, the carpet will become moist and it will take some time before it dries off. Open the windows and the doors in the room, turn on fans, and just do your best to get the air in motion. That should dry your carpet off in about an hour, or a few hours at most.

This is it! Life gets to be simple with a home carpet steam cleaner, right? If you have other rooms to steam clean, and different types of floors such as ceramic tile, or vinyl, check out the steam cleaner review in the floor steam cleaner section. Or, if you are ready to look into different manufacturers of best carpet steam cleaner models, see the buy steam cleaner section.