Will carpet cleaning remove the dents in carpet?

Will carpet cleaning remove the dents in carpet? The simple easy answer is yes and no! I’m sure you are thinking, “thanks for not really answering my question”. There is a reason that the answer is different depending on how you classify dents. So let’s start by dividing dents into two groups. Group number one is where something has sat on the carpet with enough weight to crush the carpet fibers. A great example would be a desk mat. It’s a nice big flat sheet of plastic to protect your carpet from the wheels of your desk chair. It dispurses all of your weight across a large area of carpet. That is a very large example where you can easily visualize the carpet being crushed or pushed down. That is one very big dent that just affects the carpet fibers. This group are things that crush the carpet fibers but not distort the backing of the carpet. These kinds of dents just flatten the carpet fibers and, like bad hat hair, with some work can look great again. So this first group carpet cleaning normally can make the carpet look much better. This can help fluff up the carpet fibers. 

The second group is when the backing of the carpet is distorted. The example of this is a grand piano’s back leg. All that weight on one small spindle will not just flatten the carpet fibers, but it will stretch the carpet backing out of a flat shape. Carpet cleaning will not affect this kind of dent very much. The carpet fibers can be fluffed up but the backing of the carpet will still be concaved. 

There are some tricks that you can use for the second group of dents. We will call this group distortions to help separate the two kinds. These distortions can be lessened by using heat, moisture and once it’s softened up pulling the distorted backing back into shape. Some people use a wet towel and a clothing iron to soften up the carpet backing so it can be undistorted. Some use a folded paper towel and some ice cubes. Place the folded paper towel over the distortion and lay a few ice cubes on the paper towel. Slowly the ice melts and softens up the carpet backing until you can try and pull out the distortion. Or if the distortion is bad enough then you can just patch out the area with another good piece of carpet. This is normally when it’s an area that is badly distorted in a large area. For example a desk chair with no mat, the five wheels from the chair have pushed and distorted the carpet in a way that can’t be restored. 

When you think of carpet there are two parts to it, the fibers and the backing. The backing holds the fibers in place. If you get carpet wet enough and put enough pressure on it, then you can mold it into a different shape. As the carpet dries the backing will dry into place and set that new shape. This is also why we don’t recommend cleaning the carpet under heavy furniture, as it dies it will distort from the weight. If you need to clean under a heavy piece of furniture then move it off the carpet while it dries and move it back once it is stiff again. 

So to circle back to the original question, will carpet cleaning up to remove the dents in my carpet, yes it will help to fluff up the carpet. Will the carpet cleaning help remove distortions in the carpet? Yes it will help fluff up the carpet, but the distorted backing of the carpet normally doesn’t change with a carpet cleaning. Knowing this you can make sure you put sliders or something to disperse the weight of your furniture so that you have flat carpet and not end up with the weight distorting the carpet.