domestic
Mattress cleaning
Cleaning a double mattress costs £40 to £70 and a superking £60 to £110, and most firms set a minimum around £60 to £90 for the visit. Drying is the part that matters: a mattress that is still damp at bedtime is a worse problem than the one you started with, so this is a morning job with a window open.
What this covers
What it costs. Mattress cleaning costs £40 to £70 for a double, £30 to £50 for a single and £60 to £110 for a superking. Full cost breakdown.
What the job covers
- Single, double, king and superking mattresses
- Stain treatment, and urine treatment which reaches the foam
- House dust mite and allergen reduction
- Divan bases and headboards, cleaned at the same visit
- Drying, which is the part that decides whether it worked
What is involved
What is actually being removed is mostly not visible. A mattress accumulates skin cells, and the house dust mites that live on them, and it is the mite allergen rather than any stain that people with asthma or eczema notice a difference from. That is why a thorough clean targets the allergen as well as the marks.
Urine is the case that needs a different approach, and the same one as carpet: it soaks through the cover into the foam, and treating the surface makes it smell of product for a week and then of urine again. It has to be treated at depth and then dried properly, and on an old mattress the honest answer is sometimes replacement.
Method follows the construction. A pocket sprung mattress copes with low moisture extraction. Memory foam should not be wet cleaned at all, because the foam holds water and will not give it back, and a soaked memory foam mattress is a ruined one.
What the evidence says
Standards and published measurements, cited so they can be checked.
Sixty degrees is the line, and it is sharp
Washing bedding at sixty degrees killed every house dust mite in the sample. At forty it killed one mite in fifteen. The allergen behaves differently again: even a cold wash carried most of it away, because allergen is water-soluble protein and mites are animals. So a cool wash is a reasonable answer for allergen and not for the population producing it, and the two problems are worth separating before anybody books anything.
McDonald and Tovey, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 1992. The role of water temperature and laundry procedures in reducing house dust mite populations and allergen content of bedding.
Choosing someone for the job
Ask what the mattress is made of and what they will do differently because of it. Memory foam and pocket sprung want different answers.
Ask how long the drying takes and book it for a morning. A morning start gives it the whole day to dry before you need it that night.
If the reason is allergies rather than a stain, say so. The treatment for allergen reduction is not the same as the treatment for a mark, and the visit should be aimed at the right one.
Worth reading first:
Common questions
How long before I can sleep on it?
Four to eight hours with air moving, which is why it is a morning job. Memory foam takes longer and is usually cleaned without moisture for that reason.
Will it help my allergies?
Often, because the target is dust mite allergen rather than visible marks. It reduces rather than eliminates, and it needs repeating as the mites return.