How to Get Nail Polish Out of Carpet

First, what is your carpet actually made of?

Every guide online skips this bit. Which is strange, because it's the only question that changes the answer. Acetone on a nylon carpet is fine. Acetone on a viscose rug is a bin job.

Ninety seconds here saves you twenty minutes and possibly the carpet.

How to find out

The easy route is the offcut. If the carpet went down in the last ten years there's a good chance the fitters left a roll in the loft or the garage, and the label is still stapled to the back of it. No offcut, try the invoice, or the retailer's site if you can remember who did it.

Nothing at all? Then go by feel.

Wool looks matte and feels springy. Grab a handful, squeeze, let go. It comes back.

Polypropylene feels slightly waxy. Almost plasticky. Squash it and it stays squashed. This is what most budget and mid-range fitted carpet in the UK is made of, so it's the safe bet if you're guessing.

Nylon is wirier than wool but bounces back better than polypropylene.

Polyester is soft, sometimes very soft, and picks up a sheen under the light.

Viscose rugs are the ones to watch. Sold as art silk, bamboo silk, banana silk. Glossy, lies flat, looks far more expensive than it was. If your rug looks like silk and cost eighty quid, it's viscose.

Still not sure and you've got that offcut? Snip a few fibres, hold a lighter to them over the sink.

• Burning hair smell, ash crumbles between your fingers: wool.
• Melts into a hard bead, smells like a blown-out candle: polypropylene.
• Melts into a bead, faint celery smell: nylon.
• Goes up fast like a bus ticket: viscose.

What you can use on what

Four things worth knowing before you pick a row.

Acetone doesn't bleach acetate. It melts it. The fibre goes soft, then gummy, then it isn't there any more and you're looking at backing. It's rare in fitted carpet. It turns up in older rugs and cheap novelty ones. So if you're treating a rug and you genuinely don't know what it is, put a drop on a corner underneath and give it a full minute before you commit.

Viscose has the opposite problem: water. Get a viscose rug wet and it browns, stiffens like cardboard and loses the sheen permanently. Doesn't matter how carefully you blot. There's no home fix once it's done, so don't rinse, don't dab water at it, just stop and get someone in.

Wool: no ammonia, no hydrogen peroxide. Wool is a protein, same stuff as your hair. Alkali degrades it and peroxide turns it yellow. Both will leave a mark more obvious than the polish. This is also one of several reasons the vinegar and bicarb routine you'll find on half the internet is worse than doing nothing.

Polypropylene drinks oil. It's oleophilic, which means WD-40 goes in and doesn't come out. You'll clear the polish and be left with a dark patch that pulls in dirt for the next three years. Not a trade.

While you're at it, think about what's underneath

Whatever the fibre, don't flood it. Solvent that runs through the pile reaches the latex holding the carpet together, and if enough of it gets down there the layers separate. You won't notice on the day. You'll notice in six months, as a ripple or a soft spot that wasn't there before.

Little and often. On a cloth, never poured straight on.

Wet or dry? The two jobs are not the same

A fresh spill and a set blob are different problems and they want different hands. Work out which one you've got before you open anything.

Press a fingernail into it. If it gives, it's still wet, and you've got maybe ten minutes of grace. If it's hard and slightly domed, it's cured, and you've got as long as you like. Nail varnish doesn't get worse after the first hour. It just gets boring.

If it's still wet

Do not go and fetch the acetone yet. This is where people lose carpets.

The spill on the surface and the varnish in the fibres are two separate things, and you want the first one gone before you touch the second. Every drop you lift now is a drop you don't have to dissolve later.

So: kitchen roll, folded, pressed straight down onto the pool. Lift it off. Fold to a clean face. Down again. Keep going and resist the urge to wipe, because wiping is just slow rubbing.

If it's a proper puddle rather than a splash, get most of it with a teaspoon first. Scoop, don't drag.

Carry on until the paper stops picking up colour. That's usually two or three minutes and it's the most useful two or three minutes of the whole job. Only then move on to the solvent.

If it's already dry

Different approach, and a bit more satisfying.

Cured nail varnish is brittle, and cold makes it more so. Get an ice pack or a bag of frozen peas, wrap it in a tea towel so you're not soaking the carpet, and hold it on the blob for ten minutes.

It'll go from tough to glassy. Now it'll shatter instead of smearing.

Then work at it with the edge of an old bank card, or the back of a teaspoon, or an old toothbrush. Push against the base of the fibres and flick outward, working from the edge of the stain inwards. Bits will start coming away. Vacuum them up as you go, because ground back in they're a nuisance.

You will not get all of it. You are not trying to. You're trying to leave as little as possible for the solvent, because less solvent is less risk. If you can lift seventy per cent of it dry, the rest is straightforward.

What you must not do is reach for a knife. A sharp blade cuts the pile, and cut pile doesn't grow back. A bald patch is a repair job. A stain is a Saturday morning.

Red, black, and the bit nobody warns you about

Worth saying now, before you start: the film and the colour come out separately.

The plastic will lift. That's the part every guide covers. But the pigment underneath may have already dyed the fibre, and that's a different problem with a different fix. Reds and dark purples are the worst for it.

If you get the varnish out and there's still a pink ghost sitting there, don't panic and don't keep hammering it with acetone.

Acetone: the one that actually works

Everything else on this page is a compromise. This is the one that dissolves nail polish, because it's what dissolved it in the bottle to begin with. Solvent goes in, the plastic goes back into solution, the cloth takes it away.

Twenty minutes if you do it properly. A permanent mark if you don't.

Get the right bottle

Most remover on the shelf in Boots is the wrong thing. It's usually non-acetone, which is weaker and slower, and it's usually dyed and perfumed, which you are about to work into a carpet.

You want clear acetone, nothing added. Screwfix, Toolstation, or ask the chemist for acetone rather than remover. Cheap, and it lasts.

Midnight and all you've got is the bottle from the bathroom? Use it, as long as it's clear. Just expect it to take longer.

Doing it

Patch test first. Wardrobe, under the sofa, the offcut. One drop, one minute. You're looking for two things: has the carpet's own colour lifted, and has the fibre gone soft. Either one and you stop.

Then fold a white cotton cloth into a pad. Old T-shirt is perfect. Damp it with acetone, not soaking.

Press it onto the stain and hold it there for thirty seconds. Don't scrub. You're giving the solvent time to get in, and this is the step everyone skips.

Lift. Refold to a clean part of the cloth. Press again.

Keep going, working from the outside of the stain inwards. Go the other way and you'll spread it. The colour may look worse for a minute as the film turns back to liquid. That's it working.

When the cloth stops taking colour, rinse with cold water on a fresh cloth, blot dry, and leave it to air. No hairdryer.

Three ways to ruin it

Never pour it on. It runs past the pile into the latex holding the carpet together. Nothing happens on the day. Six months later you've got a ripple or a soft patch and nobody remembers why. Cloth, always.

Acetone strips dye. On dark carpet, especially cheap polypropylene, it'll take the colour out along with the polish and leave you a pale halo. Which is arguably worse, because now it looks deliberate.

Don't chase it. If three rounds haven't shifted it, a fourth won't either. It'll only take more colour with it. Stop.

Window open, by the way. The fumes are heavy and they sit low, which is where you are.