How to Clean a Mattress

To clean a mattress: strip and wash all the bedding, vacuum the whole surface with an upholstery attachment, treat any stains, cover it in bicarbonate of soda for at least four hours, vacuum again thoroughly, then let it dry completely before remaking the bed. Set aside a full day, because the drying takes longer than the cleaning by a wide margin.

If yours has yellowed patches and you are quietly wondering whether it is past saving, it almost certainly is not. Sweat, body oils and dead skin do that to every mattress eventually, no matter how often the sheets go in the wash. Yours is not unusual. Most of it comes out.

Worth being straight about one thing before you start, though. Cleaning at home reaches the top few centimetres and no further. That happens to be where the dust mites, skin cells and surface staining all sit, so it is well worth doing. But nothing you can do in a bedroom cleans the core of a mattress, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

How to Clean a Mattress in Six Steps

About an hour of actual work. The rest is waiting.

1. Strip the bed and wash everything

Sheets, protector, pillowcases, pillows. All of it off.

Wash bedding at 60°C if the label allows, because that is the temperature that kills dust mites. Anything cooler cleans the fabric and leaves the allergens exactly where they were.

While the machine runs, wipe down the frame and divan base. They collect far more dust than people expect, and there is no point putting clean bedding back onto a dusty base. Our guide to cleaning a bed properly covers the rest of it.

2. Vacuum the whole mattress

Upholstery attachment, overlapping passes, whole surface, then the sides. Swap to the crevice tool for seams, piping and buttons, since that is where the skin cells and dust actually gather.

Go slowly. A quick once over lifts the loose dust off the top and leaves everything else sitting in the fabric. If you have a vacuum with a HEPA filter, use that one. A standard filter puts the fine allergen particles straight back into the room you are trying to clean.

3. Treat stains before anything else

Do this now, while the mattress is dry and before the bicarbonate goes anywhere near it. The methods for each stain type are further down.

Blot, do not rub. Rubbing drives the stain deeper into the padding, which is the one place you have no way of reaching.

4. Cover it in bicarbonate of soda

Sieve an even layer across the whole surface. Most people use nowhere near enough. A double needs somewhere around 300g to 500g, which sounds excessive until you watch how thin it spreads.

Then leave it. Four hours minimum, overnight if you can manage it, a full day if you have somewhere else to sleep. This is the step everyone shortens, and shortening it is usually why people conclude the whole thing does not work.

5. Vacuum again, properly

Second pass over the whole mattress until there is no powder left anywhere. It takes longer than the first vacuum and you will probably have to empty the canister halfway through.

Anything left behind will clump as soon as it meets humidity. Run your palm across the surface when you think you are finished, and if it feels chalky at all, keep going.

6. Let it dry completely before making the bed

Used any moisture on stains? Then the mattress needs to be bone dry before bedding goes back on. Windows open, fan on it, and give it as long as it needs.

Making the bed over a damp mattress seals that moisture inside the padding. That is how mould starts somewhere you cannot see it, cannot smell it yet, and cannot get at it.

What You Need

• Vacuum with an upholstery attachment and crevice tool
• Bicarbonate of soda, 500g for a double
• Washing up liquid
• A few white microfibre cloths, white so no dye transfers across
• Spray bottle
• Cold water
• Enzyme cleaner, but only if you are dealing with urine

Genuinely that is it. No specialist mattress spray, no steam cleaner. If you want to know which general products earn their place in the cupboard, we have a guide to the best cleaning products for deep cleaning.

Check This Before You Start

Two minutes here will save you an expensive mistake.

How to Tell What Your Mattress Is Made Of

Look for the care label, usually stitched into a side seam near the foot end. It will tell you the fill material and whether wet cleaning is allowed.

Label long gone? Press down hard in the middle with your palm and watch what happens. Memory foam sinks slowly and keeps the shape of your hand for a second or two afterwards. Pocket sprung feels bouncy and springs straight back. Hybrid does a bit of each, springy underneath with a slower layer on top.

It matters because foam and springs handle moisture in completely opposite ways, and treating one like the other is the single most common way people wreck a mattress at home.

The Zip Is Not an Invitation

Loads of mattresses have a zipped cover, and the natural assumption is that it unzips and goes in the machine.

On a lot of cheaper foam mattresses, that cover is holding a fibreglass fire barrier in place. Unzip it and you release fine glass fibres that travel through the house, work into carpets and soft furnishings, and are difficult and expensive to get rid of afterwards. Unless the label specifically says the cover is removable and washable, leave the zip where it is. If yours has already come off, our page on mattress deep cleaning methods explains what to do next.

How to Remove Mattress Stains

Work inwards from the edge of the stain, use less liquid than feels right, and blot rather than scrub.

Yellow and Sweat Stains

Yellowing is sweat, body oils and skin cells that have oxidised over time. The most common mattress stain in the country, and the most stubborn.

Whisk a teaspoon of washing up liquid into a cup of cold water until you get a decent foam. Apply the foam only, not the liquid sitting underneath it. That way the cleaning agent gets to the stain without soaking the padding. Work it in gently, blot with a clean damp cloth, then press dry with a towel.

Set-in yellowing tends to lighten rather than vanish. Recent marks usually come out completely. Neither outcome means you did it wrong.

Urine, Fresh and Old

Fresh urine is a race. Press a dry towel down hard and absorb everything you can, standing on it if that helps, then treat with the washing up liquid foam and blot dry.

Old urine is a different problem altogether. That smell comes from uric acid crystals already bonded into the fibres, and soap will not touch them. Neither will vinegar or bicarbonate, whatever you have read. You need an enzyme cleaner, because it breaks the crystals down rather than washing over the top of them. Apply it, leave it the time stated on the bottle, usually 10 to 15 minutes, then blot dry and let the mattress dry fully.

Smell comes back after a few days? The contamination has gone deeper than the surface, which is the same problem you get with pet stains and odours anywhere else in the house.

Blood, Fresh and Dried

Cold water only, and this one is not negotiable. Heat sets blood permanently, so warm water will fix the stain in place and that is the end of it.

Fresh blood comes out with a cold damp cloth, blotting and swapping to a clean section of cloth as it picks up colour. For dried blood, mix bicarbonate of soda with cold water into a paste, spread it over the mark, leave it half an hour, brush it off and blot with cold water. Repeat the process rather than scrubbing harder.

Why Hydrogen Peroxide Needs Care

Hydrogen peroxide turns up in nearly every mattress cleaning guide online, and it does work on protein stains. It is also a mild bleach, which those guides tend to mention rather quietly or not at all.

On white ticking, fine. On anything coloured or patterned, it can leave a pale patch that draws the eye more than the original stain did, and there is no undoing it. If you use it, test somewhere hidden near the base first, dilute to 3 per cent, and understand you are swapping one risk for another. For most household stains the washing up liquid method is safer and nearly as effective.

Does Bicarbonate of Soda Actually Clean a Mattress?

Bicarbonate of soda deodorises and draws out moisture. It does not disinfect, it does not kill dust mites, and on its own it will not lift a set-in stain.

Worth knowing, because the internet presents it as a cure-all and then people feel let down when it does not perform miracles. What it genuinely does is absorb the odour compounds sitting in the top layer of fabric along with any leftover damp, which is why a mattress smells so much fresher afterwards.

Two things separate it working from it not working. Use enough, meaning a visible even layer rather than a light dusting. And give it time, meaning four hours at the absolute minimum.

Plenty of people add a few drops of lavender oil to the powder first. That is fine and it smells lovely. It is not cleaning anything.

Cleaning Different Types of Mattress

Memory foam. The least forgiving material in the bedroom. Viscoelastic foam soaks moisture up readily and gives it back very slowly, so use the bare minimum of liquid, work with foam rather than solution wherever you can, and never soak a stain. Bicarbonate and vacuuming are completely safe and will do most of the work anyway.

Pocket sprung and open coil. Much more tolerant, because air moves through the structure and helps it dry out. You can afford slightly more moisture on stains, though blotting still beats scrubbing. Rotate it every three months to keep the filling even.

Hybrid. Treat the top surface like memory foam, since that is usually what the comfort layer is. The springs underneath are not the part you are cleaning.

Toppers. Check the label, because a few are machine washable and most are not. Foam toppers get treated exactly like memory foam. If yours is washable, cool gentle cycle and air dry flat. Never a tumble dryer, which breaks down the foam structure for good.

Can You Steam Clean a Mattress?

You can steam clean a sprung mattress carefully. You should never steam clean memory foam.

Steam puts heat and a lot of moisture into a material that holds onto both. In foam that means water sitting in the core with no way out, and mould inside the mattress within days. The heat degrades the foam structure as well, so the support goes permanently.

On a sprung mattress, brief passes at a distance are workable, keeping the head moving and never letting it linger. Even then it needs several hours of active drying afterwards. Professionals use hot water extraction instead, which is a different thing entirely, because the machine pulls the moisture straight back out rather than leaving it behind.

How to Dry a Mattress Properly

The part that matters most, and the part nearly everyone rushes.

How Long It Takes

Four to six hours with the windows open after light stain treatment. Eight to twelve after anything heavier. Memory foam takes longer than sprung, sometimes a good deal longer.

A fan speeds it up considerably, pointed across the surface rather than down at it, since moving air over the whole face does more than blasting one spot. A dehumidifier in the room does more than either.

Drying a Mattress in a British Winter

Most guides tell you to stand it outside in the sun, which is fine advice in California. For much of the year here, a mattress left in the garden takes on more moisture than it loses.

Indoors, three things make the difference. Stand it on its side so air can reach both faces. Put a fan on it and leave it running for hours rather than minutes. And keep the heating on with a window slightly open, because warm moving air dries far faster than cold still air, even though heating a room you are also ventilating feels like the wrong thing to do.

How to Tell If It Is Still Damp Inside

Press a dry palm firmly into the treated area and hold it for ten seconds. Cool means damp. Damp means wait.

Do not go by how the surface feels. The top can be completely dry while the layer below it is still wet, and that is precisely the situation that grows mould inside a mattress with no sign of it until the smell arrives weeks later.

How Often Should You Clean a Mattress?

Vacuum monthly, deep clean with bicarbonate of soda every three to six months, and get it professionally cleaned every one to two years.

Task	How often
Wash bedding	Weekly, at 60°C
Vacuum the mattress	Monthly
Treat stains	Immediately, as they happen
Full clean with bicarbonate of soda	Every 3 to 6 months
Wash the mattress protector	Every 4 to 8 weeks
Rotate the mattress	Every 3 months
Professional deep clean	Every 1 to 2 years

Push towards the shorter intervals if anyone in the house has asthma or allergies, if pets sleep on the bed, or if you sweat heavily at night. Our guide to regular mattress cleaning goes into why the interval matters more than the effort.

How to Keep a Mattress Clean

Buy a waterproof mattress protector. It is the single most effective thing on this page and it costs less than a takeaway. Sweat, spills and accidents never reach the mattress, and the protector goes in the washing machine. Almost everything above becomes unnecessary if you use one and actually wash it.

After that: air the bed for half an hour each morning instead of trapping the night’s moisture under a duvet, keep the bedroom cool since dust mites want warmth and humidity, deal with spills the moment they happen, and keep food and drink out of the bed. Vacuum every time you change the sheets and it stays a thirty second job rather than becoming a project.

When Cleaning Won’t Fix It

Stains That Do Not Come Out

Years-old yellowing will lighten but rarely clear entirely. Anything that has bleached or discoloured the fabric itself, rather than sitting on top of it, is permanent. Old blood that met warm water at some point is set for good.

Disappointing, but it is not a hygiene problem. A stain that will not shift is cosmetic, and a protector covers it.

When to Call a Professional

Worth it for heavy urine contamination, an odour that keeps coming back after treatment, visible mould, a mattress that has gone years without a clean, or an allergy sufferer in the house who is not getting any better.

The equipment is the difference. Hot water extraction injects and immediately removes the moisture rather than leaving it behind, so a professional can clean far harder than you safely can at home without creating a drying problem. Pricing is in our mattress cleaning cost guide.

When to Replace Instead

No amount of cleaning fixes a mattress that sags in the middle, has broken or audible springs, shows mould growing through the fabric, leaves you waking with aches you do not get anywhere else, or has passed ten years old.

Most mattresses last seven to ten years. Cleaning extends the life of a good one. It will not bring back one that is finished.

Not getting anywhere with it? We deep clean mattresses across Nottingham using hot water extraction, which reaches what home cleaning cannot and leaves the mattress dry enough to sleep on the same night. Have a look at our mattress cleaning service.

Frequently Asked Questions