How Often Should You Clean Your Mattress
Some people never clean their mattress unless they spill something on it, and even then, cleaning involves a dot and dab.
If that grosses you out, consider this – we shed around 1,500,000 skin flakes every hour, so your mattress contains billions of dead skin flakes.
Add salts from sweat, dust mites, pet dander, and other allergens, and you have a recipe for an icky mattress in desperate need of cleaning.
Despite all that, your mattress might not smell or look bad, which is the trap people fall into.
When to clean your mattress
We recommend dry cleaning your mattress every three months and performing a wet clean once yearly to remove dirt below the surface.
You should also clean spills immediately using an appropriate cleaning product, which might be acidic or enzymatic, depending on the spillage. However, if you use a mattress topper, you might not need to clean your mattress ever.
Dry cleaning your mattress
Dry cleaning involves:
- Carpet cleaning powder.
- A stiff-bristled brush.
- A vacuum cleaner with a decent amount of suction (such as a Henry).
The steps are easy to follow:
- Vacuum your mattress on high power
- Sprinkle dry carpet cleaner all over the mattress
- Wait ten minutes
- Agitate the powder with a brush
- Wait ten minutes
- Vacuum the powder up and let it air for an hour.
We recommend a dry clean every three months – it will remove dead skin and dander and freshen your mattress with a pleasant scent.
Wet cleaning your mattress
Wet cleaning involves a wet vacuum cleaner and a mild, antibacterial detergent like Dettol laundry sanitiser or soapy water.
The idea is to push cleaning fluid to around an inch below the mattress surface, lifting away baked-in grime like dead skin and dander.
Wet vacuum cleaners can push liquid down and suck it up and are the only tools for the job (which is why professionals use them).
The steps are relatively easy:
- Dry vacuum the mattress to remove any surface dirt.
- Wet vacuum the mattress on medium power.
- Check the water for colour – change when dark grey.
- Wet vacuum the mattress on high power.
- Check the water for colour.
- Stop wet vacuuming when the water runs almost clear.
- Let the mattress dry somewhere warm and dry for 48 hours.
We recommend wet cleaning your mattress once per year, but you can reduce this to six months if you sleep with pets.
Cleaning up spills
Whether it’s bodily fluids, tea, or wine, you should clean up spills within a few minutes to prevent liquids from saturating your mattress.
Once organic liquids penetrate your mattress, it is impossible to stop odours from forming. You can clean and mask them with deodorisers, but the bacteria that cause the odours will always come back.
The following are notorious for bad odours:
- Urine
- Faeces
- Milk (dairy and plant-based)
- Fruit juice
- Wine
- Stale water
Most people spill milk or wine, which are terrible for causing odours. Clean them by soaking up as much liquid as possible and diluting them with detergent. The worst thing you can do is throw a towel over a spill and leave it until morning.
Using a mattress topper can eliminate cleaning
If you can’t be bothered cleaning your mattress and don’t want to risk spills, you can throw a mattress topper over your mattress.
A mattress topper protects your mattress against contamination at the expense of changing how it feels, which can be a good or bad thing.
A soft mattress topper can make an overly firm mattress bearable, while a firm one can breathe new life into a soft, willowy mattress.
However, unless you buy a waterproof mattress protector, you can still stain and contaminate your mattress with a regular mattress topper on it. Our article on whether mattress toppers are worth it explores this in more detail.
Related pages
If you enjoyed this article, discover how to take care of your mattress.