How to Get Tomato Sauce Out of Carpet in 6 Ways

Did you drop some tomato sauce on your carpet while enjoying spaghetti with meatballs? While you may think that taking it to a professional carpet cleaner is the only solution, there are many DIY methods you can try to solve this problem. Let's look at how to get tomato sauce out of carpet with minimal effort.

At first, you’ve to scoop out as much of the sauce as you can and blot the stain. Then, you can use products like lemon juice and salt, dish detergent, hydrogen peroxide, and red wine stain remover to clean off the stain. Once that’s done, rinse the carpet to remove the cleaning residue in it.

Keep reading this article to find out how to implement these methods in detail and learn how to remove a tomato sauce stain from your carpet, no matter what types of pasta sauce we're talking about as long as it's a red variety. Additionally, we’ll also show you a cool trick you can use to get rid of a dried tomato sauce stain. Let’s dive in!

First Steps for Getting Tomato Sauce Out of Carpet

Before you start removing the tomato stains from your carpet, you can do a few things to make your job much easier. Here’s how you should begin to take care of a tomato sauce spill on your carpet:

Scoop Out the Tomato Sauce

The first step you need to get rid of the tomato sauce from your carpet is to scoop it out as much as you can. You can use a butter knife, a spatula, or an old credit card. This goes for getting ketchup out of carpet, too.

When you scoop the tomato sauce, you need to pay attention so that you don’t rub it against the carpet fibers too hard and spread the stain further. Now, place a bowl close to the stain so that you don’t accidentally drop it again on the carpet.

If you don’t trust yourself to do a good job at scooping the tomato sauce, another option that you can use is to vacuum it. Instead of dragging the vacuum hose over the carpet, put it into the carpet fibers of a stained area and hold it for a few seconds. Then, move to another stained spot and do the same thing.

No matter which method you prefer, the goal is to take out as much sauce from the carpet as possible. Doing so won’t help you get rid of the existing stain, but it’ll prevent the carpet from getting more stained.

Blot the Discolored Area

Blot the stained area of your carpet with a dry and clean paper towel. Be gentle so that the tomato sauce doesn’t go deeper into the carpet fibers. Keep going and change the paper towel as necessary until it no longer becomes red. Remember, blotting is critical in how to get tomato sauce out of carpet, as well as anything else.

When doing it, you won’t be able to get all of the tomato sauce out, but you’ll get most of it. Again, the idea here is to minimize the amount of tomato sauce on the carpet so that the products you’ll be using later can easily take care of the stains.

How to Remove Tomato Sauce Stains From Carpet

After scooping and blotting the tomato sauce on your carpet, only a little bit of it will remain. But even that small amount can leave a visible red stain. Luckily, there are many options for you to get rid of that stain, very similar to getting a turmeric stain out of your carpet, which is found in curry. Here are some of the most common and effective ones:

Lemon Juice & Salt

The combination of household ingredients like lemon juice and salt is useful in lightening and lifting stains. The lemon juice has a bleaching effect that’ll lighten the stain, while salt has the ability to absorb the liquid from the carpet fibers. You can use baking soda instead of salt, as it does the same job.

Start by squirting lemon juice on the stained area of the carpet. Then, sprinkle salt or baking soda over the area and make sure you cover all the stains. Wait for at least fifteen minutes for the salt to dry. Once it’s dry, use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dried salt crystals residing on the carpet.

Make sure you don’t spread the salt to the other areas of the carpet when you’re vacuuming it. You’ll get a lot of tomato sauce out with the salt, and the lemon juice will lighten the stain to a great extent.

Dish Detergent

If using salt and lemon juice doesn’t remove the stain entirely, you can complete the job using dish detergent. A good-quality dish detergent can remove stubborn tomato or spaghetti sauce stains from your carpet.

When using a dish detergent, it’s important that you use a non-bleach detergent. Otherwise, the carpet can be discolored. It’s a good idea to use a clear dish detergent because the dye in a colored dish detergent can also cause discoloration.

Mix one teaspoon of dish detergent with a cup of warm water and put the solution in a spray bottle. Apply it to the stained area and let it sit for a while so that it can work. Blot the stained area with a clean, white paper towel or cloth, and repeat it until the stain disappears.

Hydrogen Peroxide

Hydrogen peroxide can do a great job lightening a bright stain but can make your carpet bleached if used incorrectly. So, you should only use it on light or white carpets. Because of the risk associated with hydrogen peroxide, we recommend using it only if you can’t get the job done with lemon juice and dish detergent.

You’ll apply and use it the exact same way as you did with the dish detergent. Mix 3% hydrogen peroxide with warm water, put it in a spray bottle, and repeat the steps you learned while using dish detergent. Avoid using hydrogen peroxide on carpets that are made from wool.

Red Wine Stain Remover

If you’re dealing with a stubborn stain, you can use a red wine stain remover. While it’s meant to remove red wine, it’ll also do a great job removing marinara sauce, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, and any other tomato-based sauce from your carpet. There are plenty of options for red wine stain removers in the market.

Make sure that the one you get doesn’t use bleach to avoid discoloring or damaging your carpet. The method of application can vary depending on the product you choose. Follow the instruction manual that comes with the stain remover.

How to Deal with Tomato Sauce Stains That Already Set In

When you catch a stain early, removing the stain is usually easy as the culprit behind the stain doesn’t settle too deeply in the carpet fibers. But when the stain has had time to set, become dry, and connect to the carpet fibers, the job appears to be much more difficult.

Luckily, it doesn’t mean that the stain is beyond removal. You can just follow an extra step to turn the dry and hardened stain into a fresh one. How do you do that? A fresh stain is moist, and if you take a wet white cloth and blot the area of the stain, the hardened stain will also become moist.

Make sure you don’t rub the stain when you’re blotting it, as doing so could further spread the stain. This is the same risk you run when getting a hot sauce stain out of your carpet. But yes, rehydrating the stain will make it easier to remove. You can start by using baking soda or salt to draw out the stain from deep within the carpet fibers.

Once you do that, you can then remove the stain by following any of the methods mentioned above. But keep in mind that it’ll take more work to remove than a normal stain as it’s had more time to settle. If you’re not successful at removing the stain, you can hire a professional cleaner for the job.

What to Do After Removing the Tomato Stains

After removing the stains from your carpet, there’ll be a residue of the cleaning products you used left behind on the carpet. You need to rinse the carpet thoroughly to remove those. Do that with a wet white cloth until you feel confident that you’ve got the cleaning residue out of the carpet.

Regardless of whether you use salt and lemon, dish detergent, hydrogen peroxide, or another substance, you need to rinse the carpet. Otherwise, the carpet can get damaged. Once you are done, you can congratulate yourself on a job well done.

That’s How to Get Tomato Sauce Out of Carpet!

You may be wondering why pasta sauce stains everything so easily, like even plastic containers. And the reason is that tomatoes and tomato sauce both contain a very brightly red colored pigment that goes by the name lycopene. That molecule is hydrophobic, so it resists water and clings to other surfaces.

We recommend trying the salt and lemon juice solution first and working your way to the other ones until you get rid of the stain. Don’t forget to rinse the carpet after removing the stain to prevent your carpet from being damaged. Leave a comment below if you have any questions regarding this matter.

Now you no longer have to wonder how to get tomato sauce out of carpet as you know about multiple ways of doing it. The methods mentioned in this article get progressively more effective as you scroll down. Work through them in that order if needed to progressively eliminate the stain more and more until satisfied.

You'll Also Enjoy:

• 18 Types of Soap for Cleaning You or Surfaces Spotless
• How to Get Blueberry Stains Out of Carpet in 8 Ways
• How to Get Mustard Out of Carpet in 4 Ways
• How to Get Grease Out of Carpet in 4 Ways
• How to Get Coffee Out of Carpet in 12 Ways