7 Best Ways to Remove Oil Stains from Clothes

An oil stain on your clothes is pesky, stubborn, and almost impossible to remove. Or is it? While treating oil stains isn’t the simplest task on the face of the planet, there are strategies bound to deliver good results.

Treating Fresh Oil Stains with Baking Soda

When it comes to oil stains, the sooner you try to clean them, the better results you’ll get.

If you’re addressing a fresh oil stain, you can count on the following supplies:

• Baking soda
• Dish soap
• A toothbrush or clothes brush
• Soft, absorptive cloth
• Cardboard (for placement behind the stain)

Put the cardboard cutout behind the stain. This way, you’ll be protecting the piece of clothing’s other side from getting some of the staining transferred to it. If both the front and the back are stained, you can still use the cardboard to make work easier.

Start working on the stain while the fabric is dry. Bloat some of the excess oil with the absorptive cloth or napkin.

Sprinkle baking soda on top. The aim of the soda is to “extract” the grease from the fabric as much as possible. Be generous – a thick layer will be needed to get the job done. For best results, let the baking soda sit on the fabric for at least 30 minutes. If you don’t have baking soda, corn starch or a thick layer of salt will also do.

Next, apply some dish soap. The liquid is meant to remove oil from dishes and it can work in a similar manner on fabric. Let the detergent soak in thoroughly. When this has happened, use the brush to gently scrub more of the detergent into the stain.

You’re ready for the final step – throw the garment into the washing machine and launder as usual. If you need to, go through two washing machine cycles. That should be enough to get rid of a fresh oil stain in its entirety.

Can You Treat Set Oil Stains at Home?

It’s very important to refrain from just washing and drying a piece of clothing that has a stubborn oil stain.

If you do, you’ll be “baking” the stain into the fabric itself. This will make the grease much more difficult to get out.

Still, you can attempt one procedure to remove a set oil stain from a garment that has already been washed.

You will need WD-40 for the purpose.

Instead of pre-treating the stain with baking soda like you did in the case of a fresh stain, you’ll have to use the WD-40. While this seems like a nonsensical advice, an oil-based product can actually “lift” and extract an oil-based stain.

The same applies to a pre-treatment with an enzyme-based product before washing clothes as usual.

Dry Cleaning and Oil Stains

Are you worried that the DIY approach will simply ruin your clothes? If that’s the case, refrain from employing one of the two strategies mentioned above.

Valet Laundry dry cleaning is one of the best choices for the removal of oil stains and other stubborn kinds of residue from clothes.

Instead of using water and detergent, dry cleaning relies on a liquid solvent. It’s much more powerful than the products formulated for at-home use. As a result, dry cleaning can tackle impossible stains like those from petroleum and engine oil.

When choosing a dry cleaning service for an oil-stained garment, make sure that the process is 100 percent solvent-based. If water gets used during any part of the cleaning process, it will increase the risk of having some residue from the oil on your clothes.

Ready to give a try? Schedule your pickup today!