Removing old, unidentifiable stains from carpet - help?

[KwazyKupcakes]

Evening chaps

There are a number of greyish stains on our bedroom carpet - we moved in about six months ago and they were there and we just haven't removed them. Absolutely no idea what they are but they may have been there for years.... old cream (ish) carpet.

Any recommendations for how to remove? Is my only hope rug doctor (any reviews?) or a new carpet...? They are so ugly, they get me down.

Thanks!

Have you tried baby wipes? They can be fairly effective (and cheaper than a rug doctor)
You can also get a foaming shampoo (think it's vanish) that you can spot treat with. But if neither work then the rug doctor is really good- if you've never washed a carpet, you'll be very shocked by the colour of the water!
If you have kids/pets and a carpeted house it's worth buying a carpet cleaner as you'll find you'll be using it quite regularly (although not too often or your carpet could get damaged)

Rug Doctors are amazing!

I bought a Vax years ago and it is pretty good although I think Rug Doctor might be better in your situation. I wanted to clean all the carpets in a house we bought for our kids to live in. The condition of the carpets was ok but there were a few stains. What a difference when we cleaned them. It saved me a carpet in a large bedroom.

If it's a cream carpet you can try a drop of bleach in hot water with some washing powder - work it in with a sponge and leave it to dry.
Otherwise rug doctor is brilliant it removed everything on our cream carpets. We are renting it again this week as we are a grubby household but it's taken 6 months to need it again

Don't use bleach unless it's a polypropylene carpet. You don't want to create more noticeable pale patches. Cleaning the whole carpet may well work and Rug Doctors are great. Don't buy the expensive detergents though, just use something like Persil Small and Mighty instead.

Dr Beckmanns carpet cleaner is amazing for spot cleaning.

Can you get together with a friend and that way it splits the cost?

Wow, thanks so much for the quick advice!

letmesleep - when you say you'd recommend buying a carpet cleaner, do you mean like rug doctor or do you mean like some kind of spray?

irritated I'll try Dr Beckmann...any other recommendations for good solutions?

Reassured by the positive words in rug doctor - I live pretty far from my friends (army!) so splitting may not be an option, but if rug doctor is good...!

Thanks again

Also - so you have to buy the rug doctor detergent for it to be effective?

What's rug doctor? We have exactly the same problem you can hire it? It cleans the whole carpet plus the stains?

I swear by the waitrose carpet cleaner. It's worked on everything so far and is cheap.

Ppeatfruit Rug doctor is a carpet cleaning machine that you can hire from dry cleaners and supermarkets. It's amazing.

Rug Doctors are upright machines so a darn sight easier to operate than many of the others you can hire. I noticed no difference in cleaning using Persil small and mighty instead of the Rug Doctor stuff.

Thanks Bike and wow . I've got a Karcher steam indoor cleaner do you think that would work without any detergent product? (you don't need it on floor tiles}. I know I should 've tested by spot cleaning with it

I use a professional carpet cleaner. He is local and excellent.

For localised stains, I recommend Vanish Power Shot. It's been great for all my carpets following 15 years of DCs. Although the coffee and red wine weren't strictly their fault, the paint, glue, food, squash etc were... All have been removed over the years along with those grey patches that always seem to appear.

Sorry, just seen the updates, I meant an actual carpet cleaner, we have a bissell one (the cheapest one we could find at the time). So much easier to deal with spills straight away, and we needed it loads when potty training !