Is there really carpet that can resist bleach? Capell Flooring Takes a Closer Look

A few years back, I was in my store minding my own business waiting for a sales call from one of our carpet manufacturer’s sales reps.  Often we are showed new samples during these appointments, and they show us new carpet but nothing exciting happens during these visits.  We order some sample books typically of the ones we think you, our wonderful customers, would like best, but not much else usually happens until this one particular visit.

My rep said, “This carpet doesn’t let bleach affect it at all.”  I thought to myself, right.  My first experience that I can remember with bleach was when I was in 5^th grade.  I had saved my allowance and bought a basketball t-shirt with my saved money.  Unfortunately, being the active the kid I was I got a large grass stain on it playing football at recess.  I had overheard my mother saying that she used bleach to get out tough stains.  I chose to take matters into my own hands, and put bleach onto my new beloved shirt.  The shirt fabric was basically eaten before my eyes and what was left turned from white to yellow.  ARRRRGGGG, the horror, my new shirt was ruined a week after I got it!!!  I later learned how to mix bleach in with a load of laundry so it would not do this but I did learn to be careful when using it.  Yep, my mom set me straight on how to use bleach with laundry.

Flip the switch back to this appointment, when my rep pulled out a couple of swatches of carpet that had already been applied with bleach.  One was stained like you would expect bleach to do being extremely faded, but the other didn’t visibly look like bleach had been on it at all.  It did, however, smell like bleach had been on it, but the color of the fiber looked undamaged.  I was impressed, but I wanted to do some of my own experimenting.  At Capell Flooring and Interiors, we like to give accurate and honest information to our customers from personal experience, so I ordered a bunch of different carpet swatches, and a large bottle of bleach.  I wanted to experiment with this new claim.  After numerous tests, I found that there are definitely some solution-dyed carpets both made of polyester and nylon that resist bleach.    If you talk to the manufacturer they say that you can use a 50% bleach 50% water solution for really tough stains, but it is still probably the last option when cleaning carpet or spot cleaning.  The reason I say this is because bleach is still a little hard on the backing of carpet even if it won’t do anything to this particular type of fiber.  Several brands have this type of fiber, and please feel free to talk to us about it or stop by our floor covering office in Meridian, Idaho.  Thanks for reading!