Black baseboards or black marks on your carpet are an unpleasant sight. Any dark carpet looks nasty. You often wonder what causes the sooty edges even when you always sweep your home and even how to get soot out of carpet. Perhaps you wondered, “I keep on cleaning my home but why are the edges of my carpet black?”

Causes of Black and Dirty Edges

“Why are the edges of my carpet black?”, you’ve asked yourself for the nth time.

Well, filtration soiling is the culprit to the dirty lines that you see around baseboard edges. This has something to do with your HVAC system because the airflow is affected. When the air that comes into the room travels at a higher speed than when it leaves, expect to have airborne contaminants trapped.

The trapped air doesn’t pass through the ventilation system and instead leaves the room through open cracks. This is why you see black spots on carpet, may they be on the edges of the baseboards, stairs, and underneath doors.

Carpet Baseboard
Carpet Baseboard

Once this happens, the carbon and dust particles brought by the air settles down. No carpet padding is underneath the edges of the carpet baseboard, and this can leave dirt in these areas.

As time passes by, you see black carbon stains along the edges. The lines are visible and this leads to a dark carpet. The carbon particles are not just about the dust. They can also come from furnaces, candles, fireplaces, gas hot water heaters, and even smoking. Carpet cleaning becomes difficult because of these particles.

How to Prevent Black Edges

To prevent filtration soiling, you need to reduce activities that cause smoke. Limit grilling indoors, reduce smoking, and lessen the use of incense and candles.

There are barrier materials often installed between the sill plate’s bottom and the wall. This is commonly found in new homes, and it helps to reduce drafts and air leaks under the carpet baseboard. Older homes often lack this protection, making them more exposed to soil filtration.

To prevent black lines from ruining your carpets, regularly dust stain baseboard. Vacuum carpet edges and use edger attachments. Replace air filters once a month and use a clear silicone caulk around the floor trim to reduce drafts.

Black Spots on Carpet
Black Spots on Carpet

Specialized Cleaning

To learn how to get soot out of carpet, a lengthy procedure is often done. Of course, the usual carpet cleaning costs less than having a specialized cleaning to remove sooty line stains. Black spots on carpet are hard to get rid of and even chemical solutions may not remove all the lines. Removing black lines on your own follows multiple steps.

Since the stains are carbon-based, special chemical formulations need to be sprayed on the stain baseboard. You let the solution soak before you use a special brush to scrub the dirt away. This is done by hand so just like dealing with water damage, imagine the effort you need to pour just to get the task done.

There you have the answers to “Why are the edges of my carpet black?”. If you find it tricky how to clean corners of carpet, a carpet technician is the best person to call to deal with cleaning rugs and black baseboards.