How to wash a mattress pad

A mat­tress top­per is an excel­lent inven­tion that pro­tects the mat­tress from dirt, dust, traces of pets, stains, and pro­longs its life. Thanks to him, the bed will stay clean longer. How­ev­er, the cov­er itself needs to be cleaned, includ­ing washed, like oth­er bed­ding, though not as often. The rules for car­ing for such a prod­uct main­ly depend on the type of fab­ric from which it is made. From this arti­cle you will find out how often you need to wash the mat­tress cov­er, whether it should be done man­u­al­ly or in a wash­ing machine, which deter­gent is bet­ter to use, and you will also find answers to oth­er ques­tions on this top­ic.

How often to wash a mattress pad

In gen­er­al, the reg­u­lar­i­ty of wash­ing depends only on you, this can be done both once a week and once a month. Very often wash­ing does not make sense. The mat­tress pad is in con­tact with the mat­tress, which is already clean, as well as with the sheets, which are changed 1 or 2 times a week, so it should not get very dirty. In addi­tion, the more often the prod­uct is washed, espe­cial­ly by machine, the less it will last. How­ev­er, experts rec­om­mend car­ry­ing out such a pro­ce­dure at least once every six months. Between wash­ings, the cov­er can be vac­u­umed, for exam­ple, at each change of bed linen. You can also beat and air the prod­uct so that it stays fresh longer.

Washing by hand and machine

Of course, machine wash­ing is eas­i­er, as a mat­tress pad, espe­cial­ly designed for a large fam­i­ly bed, is quite heavy when wet. It will be dif­fi­cult to clean, rinse and espe­cial­ly squeeze it out. To under­stand whether your prod­uct is machine wash­able, look at the tag, which should be sewn to one of the sides of the cov­er. It indi­cates the type of fab­ric, there are rec­om­men­da­tions for wash­ing, dry­ing, iron­ing, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­cess­ing with bleach­es and stain removers.

If for some rea­son there is no tag on the prod­uct, the type of fab­ric is not deter­mined, it is rec­om­mend­ed to car­ry out only gen­tle pro­cess­ing with the min­i­mum allow­able para­me­ters. That is, wash in warm water, by hand, using liq­uid prod­ucts, do not rub hard and do not wring out, do not bleach, dry on a rope or dry­er bar. Also hand wash items made of del­i­cate fab­rics, for exam­ple, wool, silk. It is not rec­om­mend­ed to process such mat­tress cov­ers in the machine, as they can be deformed, stretched or, on the con­trary, sit down, after which nor­mal oper­a­tion will no longer be pos­si­ble.

In the machine, you can wash cov­ers made of fab­rics such as poly­ester, microfiber, cot­ton, linen, holofiber, mixed fab­rics, for exam­ple with the com­po­si­tion: 80% cot­ton, 20% poly­ester, polyurethane mem­brane.

How to wash a mattress pad depending on the type of fabric

Con­sid­er the fea­tures of the pro­cess­ing of mat­tress cov­ers, depend­ing on the mate­r­i­al of man­u­fac­ture:

1. 
   Cot­ton, linen. Pro­cess­ing is suit­able at a tem­per­a­ture of 40–60 and even 90 degrees, you can wring it out at high speeds, use ordi­nary wash­ing pow­der, dry it in a dry­er or in the sun.

2. 
   microfiber. Water tem­per­a­ture — no high­er than 60 degrees, any deter­gent, but liq­uid is bet­ter, do not use bleach­es con­tain­ing chlo­rine, wring out at medi­um speed, do not dry in a dry­er or on a bat­tery.

3. 
   Blend­ed Fab­ric - fol­low the infor­ma­tion on the tag or use a del­i­cate, gen­tle wash cycle, includ­ing clean­ing prod­ucts by hand.

4. 
   Bam­boo. If this is a thin prod­uct con­sist­ing of a sin­gle lay­er of bam­boo fiber, it can be machine washed at a tem­per­a­ture of 30–40 degrees, use liq­uid house­hold chem­i­cals, do not use spin, dry it out­side or in a well-ven­ti­lat­ed area. Ortho­pe­dic bam­boo mat­tress pad or bam­boo-filled prod­uct can­not be washed. You can apply dry clean­ing, includ­ing with a vac­u­um clean­er. Stains are removed man­u­al­ly using spe­cial prepa­ra­tions.

5. 
   Coconut. The coconut fiber mat­tress top­per can­not be washed. You can car­ry out dry clean­ing with a vac­u­um clean­er, ven­ti­late. You can also give the prod­uct for pro­fes­sion­al dry clean­ing, it is rec­om­mend­ed to car­ry it out at least once every 2–3 years.

6. 
   Jacquard satin, silk, oth­er del­i­cate fab­rics. Such mate­ri­als require care­ful han­dling, there­fore they should be washed at a min­i­mum tem­per­a­ture, using appro­pri­ate deter­gents, with­out bleach­es and chlo­rine-based stain removers, with­out wring­ing and dry­ing in a tum­ble dry­er. You can iron such a cov­er, but also at a min­i­mum tem­per­a­ture and only from the wrong side.

7. 
   Pouch filled with feath­er or down. Machine wash­able, but the water tem­per­a­ture should not be hot­ter than 40 degrees. Instead of deter­gent, you can use spe­cial balls for wash­ing, they, more­over, will not allow the feath­ers to stick togeth­er. The spin speed should not be high — no more than 400 rev­o­lu­tions. An addi­tion­al rinse is required, bleach with chlo­rine is not used, it is bet­ter to dry in the sun, shak­ing the prod­uct from time to time so that the feath­ers and fluff dry bet­ter and are even­ly dis­trib­uted over the cov­er.

8. 
   Wool. As already men­tioned, prod­ucts made from such a del­i­cate mate­r­i­al are best washed by hand. But if your wash­ing machine has a “Wool” mode, you can also use the machine pro­cess­ing method, just set this par­tic­u­lar mode, the nec­es­sary para­me­ters are set there by default. Use liq­uid deter­gents with lano­lin, designed specif­i­cal­ly for wool­lens. It is not nec­es­sary to iron and dry the mat­tress pad in the sun. So that it dries faster and does not stretch, wring it out with­out twist­ing it, wrap it in a ter­ry tow­el to remove excess mois­ture, then dry it hor­i­zon­tal­ly, spread­ing it across the dry­er.

9. 
   Mat­tress pad with antibac­te­r­i­al impreg­na­tion. Wash only accord­ing to the instruc­tions. Usu­al­ly such prod­ucts are not afraid of con­tact with warm water (30–40 degrees), as well as spin­ning at high speeds. But it is bet­ter not to use deter­gent at all, but to use spe­cial balls for wash­ing.

Before wash­ing mat­tress cov­ers with filler, you need to take into account the pro­cess­ing fea­tures of not only the fab­ric, but also the filler itself. For exam­ple, the arti­fi­cial holofiber mate­r­i­al used to fill mat­tress cov­ers can be washed at a tem­per­a­ture of 90 degrees, but if silk, jacquard-satin was used in the man­u­fac­ture of the prod­uct for the out­er lay­er, then the pro­cess­ing should be more del­i­cate.

A mat­tress top­per made of any mate­r­i­al and any thick­ness, hard­ness can be put on the mat­tress only after it has com­plete­ly dried after wash­ing. If the prod­uct is even a lit­tle damp, the mat­tress itself will suf­fer (mold may devel­op) and the sheet, and it will be very unpleas­ant to sleep in such con­di­tions.

Features of caring for a mattress topper depending on the degree of its rigidity

All this infor­ma­tion has already been writ­ten above, so just briefly sum­ma­rize:

1. Soft — can be washed by hand or in a type­writer, use reg­u­lar pow­der or gel, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of wring­ing, dry­ing and iron­ing depends on the type of fab­ric.

2. Medi­um hard­ness and thick­ness — hand wash in warm water, can be vac­u­umed and aired, use only liq­uid pow­ders that do not linger in the fibers and do not require long rins­ing. You can peri­od­i­cal­ly take it to dry clean­ing.

3. Hard, thick — do not wash, you can ven­ti­late and vac­u­um. If there are stains, they are removed with a solu­tion of laun­dry soap and water, using a sponge. Once every 2–3 years, dry clean­ing is manda­to­ry.

Do I need to wash a waterproof mattress cover and how to do it

A water­proof mat­tress cov­er is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a rub­ber­ized prod­uct; they are often made of a mem­brane fab­ric that sim­ply repels mois­ture and water. But it can and should be washed if it is not pro­hib­it­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er and is not direct­ly indi­cat­ed on the tag. If it can­not be washed, then it will need to be dry-cleaned. And if the prod­uct is real­ly rub­ber­ized, then it is enough to wipe it on both sides with a sponge moist­ened with soapy water, and then just with a clean, damp cloth.

You can wash water­proof mat­tress cov­ers both man­u­al­ly and in a type­writer. The mode in both cas­es should be as gen­tle as pos­si­ble — warm, not hot water; liq­uid deter­gent; no spin, no dry­ing in an elec­tric dry­er, in the sun or on a bat­tery. Just wrap the prod­uct in a ter­ry tow­el, light­ly remem­ber to sep­a­rate the max­i­mum amount of mois­ture, hang it over a bath­tub or oth­er con­tain­er so that the water glass itself.

Removing stains before washing

The mat­tress top­per is designed, among oth­er things, to pro­tect the mat­tress from dirt and pre­vent stains on its sur­face. That is why the prod­uct itself is often stained — from bio­log­i­cal flu­ids, drinks, food, cos­met­ics. In the process of wash­ing, espe­cial­ly del­i­cate, it can be very dif­fi­cult to remove such con­t­a­m­i­nants. There­fore, they must be dis­posed of in advance, using impro­vised means or house­hold chem­i­cals.

Stain removal meth­ods depend­ing on the type of pol­lu­tion:

1. Grease stains must first be treat­ed with some kind of absorbent. Salt, soda, crushed chalk, starch can absorb fat. It is nec­es­sary to sprin­kle one of these sub­stances on the stain, press it with a nap­kin and any load, leave for sev­er­al hours. Then clean the prod­uct with a brush, blot again with a paper tow­el, if nec­es­sary, wipe with alco­hol (vod­ka, med­ical alco­hol).

2. Yel­low stains after wash­ing are removed with hydro­gen per­ox­ide. If the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion is large, the prod­uct should be soaked in 5 liters of water with 4 table­spoons of per­ox­ide for about 2 hours, then washed.

3. Urine, if it has got on the prod­uct recent­ly and has not yet had time to dry, can be washed off in the usu­al way. Old pol­lu­tion is removed by soak­ing for 1 hour in water of 30–40 degrees, 1 table­spoon of ordi­nary vine­gar is added to 1 liter of liq­uid.

4. Tea and cof­fee stains are dif­fi­cult to remove with­out the use of spe­cial­ized stain removers.

5. Traces of blood are removed by treat­ment with hydro­gen per­ox­ide. After that, the stain must be washed in cool (not hot!) Water with laun­dry soap, left for half an hour, then washed as usu­al.

6. Traces of cos­met­ics can be removed with micel­lar water, as well as alco­hol.

7. A red wine stain will help elim­i­nate the ammo­nia. Only after treat­ment, be sure to wash the mat­tress pad, as ammo­nia smells very unpleas­ant, which will not con­tribute to a rest­ful sleep.

Any stain lends itself bet­ter to clean­ing if it is “fresh”. There­fore, it is rec­om­mend­ed to remove it from the mat­tress cov­er imme­di­ate­ly after it occurs. At the same time, it is bet­ter to remove the cov­er from the bed so that the pol­lu­tion does not soak the fab­ric and reach the mat­tress, which will undoubt­ed­ly be much more dif­fi­cult to clean.

Tips for caring for a mattress topper and using the product

Here are some tips to help you wash your mat­tress top­per effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly:

1. The mat­tress pad is best washed sep­a­rate­ly from oth­er things. Feath­er and oth­er fillers take up a lot of space when wet, become heavy, so the load on the drum should not be increased. Ordi­nary thin cov­ers can be washed with sheets and duvet cov­ers, oth­er linens, but make sure that there is at least 20% free space left in the drum. So the wash­ing will be of bet­ter qual­i­ty, and the laun­dry will be rinsed much bet­ter.

2. If you wash your mat­tress cov­er with oth­er items, make sure they are more or less the same col­or. White is processed sep­a­rate­ly from col­or and black/very dark.

3. Any stain remover, whether it is an indus­tri­al prepa­ra­tion or an impro­vised rem­e­dy, is pre-test­ed on an incon­spic­u­ous area of ​​the prod­uct. If some kind of neg­a­tive reac­tion occurs, for exam­ple, a change in the col­or of the fab­ric, you should not con­tin­ue to use the stain remover.

4. To make the mat­tress cov­er less dirty, last longer, there is no need to wash it often, use the prod­uct for its intend­ed pur­pose. No need to sleep direct­ly on it, always cov­er the cov­er with a sheet.

Well, the last piece of advice — before you buy a mat­tress cov­er, con­sult with the sell­er or man­u­fac­tur­er. Try to find out all the infor­ma­tion regard­ing the care of the prod­uct, whether it can be washed, if pos­si­ble, on what mode and how often.