Which carpet cleaner should I hire?

[Pitapotamus]

Just that really. Various stains on my living room carpet. I’ve tried vanish but it bleaches the carpet slightly and leaves lighter patches. Carpets are all beige wool mix. Marks on them are kids grubby feet. We’re normally a no shoes in the house house but during the summer they’ve been running in and out with bare but grubby feet!

Rug Doctor is good and comes with an upholstery attachment if you need it. Don't buy their expensive detergents though - Persil Small and Mighty was recommended on here and does the job.

Place marking as I need to know this too

I think Rugdoctor works well, and is easy to source, so I've never tried any others.

Definitely Rug Doctor! The amount of dirt it extracts is amazing.

I've hired different carpet cleaners and the great advantage of Rug Doctor machines is the upright design which means you just push it along and it does the work for you. Other machines require you to do more physically and that makes using them harder work.

Is one of these professional hired machines better than the home ones that you can get from somewhere like Argos? I've also got beige carpet, that is just showing 'worn' tracks from door to kitchen and door to living room etc. I've already tried scrubbing it with the bissel Heave traffic active foam stuff, but the paths are still there when you catch it in the light.

Not sure - the machines professional use are much more powerful than anything you can buy that's advertised as for domestic use. I've had excellent results with Rug Doctor on filthy carpets and even ones I didn't think we're too bad . Some of what you describe will be down to wear on the carpet and it doesn't matter how clean it is, it will show because it's wear over time rather than dirt.

Yes, they're £30ish to hire vs £100ish to buy a domestic one outright. Completely different beast - louder, heavier, more sucky. But I agree that neither can fix tracks caused by wear rather than dirt.

ah thanks, sounds like I'll need to try it out, either the domestic or professional one, and see if the tracks are actually worn out carpet. It was a new build, about 2 years old, but a fair bit of traffic walking on it - and probably not the best quality carpet to begin with.