Why Your Carpet Feels Sticky After Cleaning
Why Your Carpet Feels Worse After Cleaning (and How to Fix It) You’ve just spent hours pushing that bulky Bissell or Rug Doctor machine back and forth, determined to get your carpets looking brand new. You’ve scrubbed every corner, refilled the tank a dozen times, and now you’re standing there… only to realise your carpet feels worse than before. Instead of being soft and fluffy, the fibres feel sticky, stiff — even a bit crunchy in spots. Sound familiar? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common headaches people run into after a DIY carpet clean using hire machines or consumer-grade units. And the sneaky culprit behind it all? Soap residue. Here’s what most people don’t realise: many off-the-shelf carpet shampoos (including the ones made for Bissell and Rug Doctor) are highly alkaline. They’re designed to break down tough grease, grime, and stains — which sounds ideal in theory. But unless you have a machine powerful enough to rinse and extract every bit of that detergent, it simply soaks deeper into your carpet fibres and stays there. Professional carpet cleaning systems use industrial-strength rinsing agents and high-powered extraction to completely flush out both the soap and the dirty water — not just from the surface, but from deep within the underlay. Unfortunately, most DIY and rental machines, including popular models from Bissell or Rug Doctor, simply don’t have the suction power to do this effectively. The result? A thin, tacky film of crystallised detergent that creates two major problems: Your carpet feels sticky or stiff right after cleaning, and It starts attracting new dirt almost immediately — a process known as re-soiling. That’s why carpets cleaned with home machines often look dull








