Yes this can happen a lot and obviously because it’s a dye, it can perminamtly dye your carpet.
Removing hair dye out of carpet is not easy, even most professional carpet cleaners are not able to do this.
The best way is to find a local carpet colour repair specialist. They will be able to give you the best results possible and save you from the very steep and dangerous learning curve you will experience if you try to do this yourself.
However, if you really want to try it (not recommended) or are just interested in how to do it, here is a step by step instruction on how to get hair dye out of carpet.
Please note. We do not accept any responsibility for any damage you may do to your carpet.
Also note, this will only work on nylon or nylon mix carpets.
Also, do not attempt to do this on a white, cream or off-white wool carpet as you will leave a yellow stain in the carpet that is even more difficult to remove.
Things you will need:
- A wet & dry machine that can vacuum water. If you don’t have one of these you could try very absorbent towels, like terry towels.
- Household Chlorine Bleach.
- Cotton Bud
- A small trigger sprayer.
- A cup or bowl.
- Sodium Thiosulfate. Google it, you can purchase it from Hot tub and swimming pool supply outlets.
- Water. Ideally in your wet & dry machine, if not a small bowel.
- Carpet dye, if you want to replace the colour you remove from the carpet.
So you are basically going to bleach the hair dye out of the carpet.
- Dilute the bleach in water 3-1 (3 parts water, 1 part bleach), or about 75% water and 25% bleach in a cup. You only need to make up a small amount, just enough to cover the hair dye area.
- Dab the cotton bud into the diluted bleach solution and work this solution into the hair dye. You need to completely cover all the hair dye with the bleach, but be careful not to over-apply into the non-affected areas of the carpet.
- You’ll then have to wait, (up to 24 hours) for the dye to work. However, you can speed up the process by using heat from a steamer or quickly moving a hot iron over the stained area. Be very careful if using the iron as you can very easily damage the carpet fibres. The safest way to do this is to leave it overnight to work on its own.
- If you are happy the hair dye is gone you can move on to step 5, if not, repeat steps 1-3 until you are happy all the hair dye has been removed.
- Now it’s very important you now neutralise the bleach. If you don’t, it will carry on working and make the area lighter and lighter. If you re-dye the area and not neutralise, the dye will be lost over time. Mix the Sodium Thiosulfate in a cup of very hot water, you’ll need about 30ml per 500ml of hot water. Mix well until all the granules are dissolved. Sodium Thiosulfateur the solution into a trigger sprayer.
- Liberally spray the solution into the bleached area. You really need to saturate the area to make sure every bit of bleach is neutralised. Leave the solution in for 5 minutes and then vacuum out with your wet & dry machine. If you don’t have a wet & dry machine, you can use very absorbent towels to remove the solution. Repeat this process.
- Smell the area, if you can still smell bleach, repeat step 6.
- Congratulation! You have just removed hair dye from your carpet!
However, you now probably have a light spot where the hair dye used to be. You can re-dye the spot and will need to use carpet dyes for this purpose. You can purchase them online with instructions how to use them.
Again, please bear in mind spot dyeing is a very specialised skill and should be carried out by a trained professional. But essentially, you are replacing the colours you have just bleached out of the carpet.
If you have any questions or would like to arrange a free consultation, contact us here,
