5 Tips on How to Get Olive Oil Out of Carpet

If you’ve accidentally spilled some olive oil onto your carpet, you’ve got yourself a grease stain. Learn our 5 tips on how to get olive oil out of carpet.

The same tips apply to this as to other stains made from cooking oil or coconut oil.

So if you’re not affected by an olive oil stain but want to remove a canola oil stain or sunflower oil stain, you can apply the tips here as well.

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How to Get Olive Oil Out of Carpet

Removing olive oil stains, or oil stains from cooking oil in general, is all about loosening the grease that has gotten onto the fabric of your carpet. So, you need to use home remedies that are effective against oil.

Tip 1: Vacuum Up the Oil Stain

This first tip only works if the olive oil stain has just started to appear. Take an absorbent cloth – kitchen paper or a household cloth – and press it firmly onto the stain.

If you are lucky, the stain will be fresh enough to soak into the cloth and not into your carpet. For this, it is important that you press the cloth firmly enough and not rub it.

Tip 2: Potato Starch

Put potato starch on the olive oil stains and press them down with your finger. Let it work for a while and then vacuum the carpet with a vacuum cleaner.

Alternatively, you can use baby powder or other types of cornstarch – for example, cornmeal.

Tip 3: Gall Soap

Gall soap works very well against olive oil stains. Apply the soap to the stain, leave it on and then take a damp cloth and gently wipe the soap off the carpet.

With this tip, be careful in case the carpet is delicate.

Tip 4: Dishwashing Liquid

If you don’t have potato starch or gall soap in the house, you can also try dishwashing liquid. Make sure that it is a gentle dishwashing liquid without lemon, otherwise a delicate carpet can be damaged.

Put some dishwashing liquid on your carpet to remove olive oil stains. Then take a damp cloth and slowly blot it out.

As with gall soap, you should only try this home remedy if the carpet tolerates it.

Tip 5: Hair Shampoo

An alternative to dishwashing liquid is hair shampoo, preferably for oily hair. Here, too, it applies that not all types of carpets tolerate hair shampoo. So be careful and it is best to test the application beforehand on a small, inconspicuous area on carpet.