How to remove common stains without damaging the fabric

Most stains come out if they're treated before they're washed and never dried in. Most stains become permanent because they were rubbed, hit with hot water, or run through a dryer while still there. The individual remedies matter less than the handful of rules that apply to all of them.

The rules that apply to every stain

• Act quickly. A fresh stain is a surface stain; a dried one has bonded with the fiber.
• Blot, don't rub. Rubbing pushes the stain deeper and roughens the fabric. Press with a clean cloth, working from the edge of the stain toward the middle.
• Cold water first when you don't know what a stain is. Heat sets protein stains — blood, sweat, egg, milk — and cold does no harm to anything.
• Check the care label before using any product. A dry clean only garment goes to the cleaner with the stain pointed out, not into your sink.
• Test on a hidden spot — an inside seam — before applying anything to the front of a garment.
• Work from the back of the fabric when you can, pushing the stain out the way it came rather than through the cloth.
• No dryer until the stain is gone. Check after washing while the garment is still wet; if the stain is still there, treat again and rewash. A dryer sets it for good.

Stain by stain

• Grease and oil (cooking oil, butter, salad dressing, makeup). Work a little dish soap or liquid detergent into the stain with a fingertip, leave it a few minutes, then wash as warm as the label allows. Grease is the one stain that likes warm water.
• Blood. Cold water, immediately, and plenty of it. Then an enzyme detergent worked in, and a cold or cool wash. Never hot water, ever.
• Sweat and deodorant marks. Soak in warm water with detergent or oxygen bleach, then wash warm. The yellow is body oil reacting with the deodorant's aluminium; it builds up over weeks, so treat underarms before washing rather than waiting for the stain to show.
• Coffee, tea and red wine. Rinse from the back with cold water, work in liquid detergent, and wash. On whites, an oxygen-bleach soak takes care of what's left. Salt on red wine mostly just makes a pink salt pile.
• Tomato sauce and curry. Scrape off the excess, rinse cold from the back, treat with detergent, wash warm. Sun-drying afterwards fades what remains on cotton.
• Grass. An enzyme detergent or stain pre-treater worked in and left for fifteen minutes, then a warm wash. Grass is a protein-and-pigment stain; rubbing alcohol helps on stubborn ones — test first.
• Ink. Put a cloth behind the stain, dab the front with rubbing alcohol on another cloth, and change cloths as the ink transfers. Rinse, treat with detergent, wash. Test first — alcohol can affect some dyes and finishes.
• Makeup and lipstick. Treat as grease: dish soap or detergent, then a warm wash.
• Mud. Let it dry completely, brush off as much as possible, then treat the remaining mark with detergent and wash. Wet mud rubs in.
• Chocolate. Scrape, rinse cold from the back, detergent, cool wash. It's part fat, part protein — cold first, then a little warmth only if the fat remains.

What not to do

• Don't use chlorine bleach as a stain remover on anything whose label doesn't show a plain triangle — it removes the stain and the dye together. See the whites and bleach guide.
• Don't use hot water on an unknown stain.
• Don't scrub. Wool pills, silk marks, cotton roughens.
• Don't stack products. One treatment, rinse, assess, then the next.

Wool, silk and delicates

Use only cool water and a wool-and-silk detergent, blot gently, and accept that some stains on these fibers are a job for a professional cleaner — point out the stain and say what caused it. Our delicates guide covers why these fibers can't take the treatments above.

LaundryMax keeps each garment's care instructions in your closet, so when a stain happens you already know whether that shirt can take a warm wash or needs the gentle route. See how it works.