Sooner or later, if you have children, pets, or a susceptibility to stomach bugs, you’re probably going to have to deal with vomit. When it occurs on your carpet, we’re going to be honest: your first thoughts might be to replace the whole carpet (more so if it occurred on an area rug). However, if it’s possible to clean red wine, orange juice, and coffee stains from carpets (and it is), it’s possible to clean vomit stains from carpeting well enough for you to forget they ever existed. Eventually. Today we’ll look at techniques for removing vomit stains and odors from carpets without resorting to burning them or switching to hardwood floors.

How to clean fresh vomit stains from carpets and rugs

If you’re “lucky” enough to catch a vomit stain as soon as it occurs (or to have seen it in the process of occurring), take heart: these are the easiest vomits to clean up physically, if not psychologically. You’ll want to start by removing as much of the solid and semi-solid bits as absolutely possible. As gross as this sounds, the more you can scoop up (e.g., with a spoon), the less likely you’ll need to deal with deep staining or difficult-to-remove odors. Naturally, breathe through your mouth instead of nose if at all possible to avoid smelling more than necessary.

Once you’ve cleaned up as much as possible, this is the point where you can switch to a carpet cleaner (see below) to speed up the process. If you’re proceeding manually, add cold water or club soda to the spill and leave it for 30 seconds before blotting the stain with paper towels, napkins, or any other clean and dry cloth. Replace whatever you use as it wets; your goal here is to soak up as much of the stain as possible. Keep doing this until you no longer see any coloration on the cloth. From this point, you can switch to a spot stain remover.

How to get rid of old vomit stains and smells from carpets

If you don’t find a stain until its already dried, whether that’s an hour later or a decade later (e.g., when moving into a new home or apartment), you’ll still use the same process outlined above; the main difference is that you’ll start from the step where you can switch to a carpet cleaner, and you might need to repeat the wetting, blotting, and stain removing steps several times to have success.

When dealing with dry stains, you also have the option of using a vacuum cleaner to deal with dry vomit, but you’ll still need to switch to either a carpet cleaner or hand-cleaning to wet the stain enough to fully remove it from the carpet.

Besides the methods outlined above, you might consider using ammonia to help remove old vomit stains. However, you’ll want to be careful with this approach, as not only is ammonia an eye, lung, and throat irritant, it can also damage certain carpet fibers or strip them of their colors. For example, ammonia, like bleach, should never be used with wool carpets or rugs, and should always be tested first in an inconspicuous part of your carpet to make sure it won’t damage the rest of it.

That said, if you do resort to ammonia, it can work surprisingly well when nothing else does. You’ll need a mixture of ammonia and warm water; one tablespoon to every cup is a safe starting point. Use a dry white cloth or towel to pad your cleaning mixture into the carpet, and use a second to dry it as much as possible before allowing it to air dry. You’ll want to repeat this process until you don’t see any further improvements.

Which carpet cleaners and vacuum cleaners deal best with vomit stains?

While it’s best to clean vomit by hand to avoid polluting cleaning equipment, once you’ve dealt with the solid parts and are primarily cleaning up a liquid stain (albeit a smelly one), a good carpet cleaner can make the process a lot faster. Our favorite deep cleaner for under $1,000 or so is the  Bissell 86T3 Big Green. It’s not the fanciest machine on the market, but it will clean as well as most comparable industrial cleaners and offers a lot of value for the price.

While we don’t typically recommend vacuuming vomit since it’s usually wet when discovered, you can use a vacuum to take care of the solid mess if you find a vomit stain after it has already dried. In addition, a quality vacuum, when used regularly, will also reduce the risks of staining and soiling, further helping you maintain your carpets in good condition. We recommend machines durable enough to last throughout all the carpets you’re likely to own, and flexible enough to clean a range of piles and styles. In our books, two good examples are the Miele Complete C3 Soft Carpet and Miele Compact C2 Electro+. We’ve reviewed the Soft Carpet multiple times (e.g., here, here, and here) and the Electro+ (e.g., here and here) and are fans of both as buy-it-for-life machines.

You can buy the Bissell 85T3 Big Green carpet cleaner here on Amazon. You can buy the Miele Complete C3 Soft Carpet here or buy the Miele Compact C2 Electro+ here.

Canadians can buy the Miele Soft Carpet here, the Compact Electro+ here, and the Bissell Big Green here.

If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home cleaning tools by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.