How to Clean Your Mattress

Knowing how to clean a mattress can help you sleep better at night. There’s more to it than running the vacuum over it now and then.

Regularly cleaning your mattress can remove allergens, dust, bacteria, and stop serious mattress problems including mold and odors.

To keep your mattress safe, healthy, and clean, you’ll need to manage routine cleaning as well as address larger problems like spots, stains, odors, and even bed bugs and dust mites.

Do you know what’s in your mattress?

You already know about dust mites and other critters in your mattress, but many also contain sweat, blood, urine and other bodily fluids along with mold and mildew. Unless you shower before bed every night, your mattress might also contain dirt, oils and trace chemicals from various toiletries, and even pollen.

Cleaning your mattress is a particularly important cleaning task if you live in a humid environment since yours is likely to retain sweat and moisture even after you get out of bed. Also, if you have pets or small children, chances are your mattress has some stains you don’t even know are there.

Signs You Need to Clean Your Mattress

You haven’t cleaned it in a few months: Your mattress needs to be cleaned every few months to keep it fresh.

You’re allergic to sleeping: Dust buildup can aggravate allergies and cause you to suffer at night. If you feel allergy symptoms more often in bed or as you wake up, it’s probably time to clean up the dust.

You’ve noticed bugs or strange bites: Bed bug infestations may not always be obvious, especially in the early stages. But you can look for signs, including seeing the bugs, noticing microscopic blood stains or insect waste spots, or unusual bites on your body.

Your mattress has an odor: Mattresses can smell from dust and skin buildup, or have an odor from bodily fluids, even mold. Odors on your mattress can be gross and disruptive for sleeping and even point to a sign of a bigger problem you need to address.

You have obvious stains: How did that stain get there? Whether mattress stains are a mystery or you know their origin, it’s best to address stains as soon as you know about them.

How to Clean a Mattress

Before you start cleaning your mattress, strip the bed and launder your linens. Wash and dry your mattress cover first, then the sheets, and finally your bedspread. Use the hottest water and dryer heat setting allowed since heat will kill dust mites in your bedding. While the washer and dryer are doing their thing, turn your attention to the mattress.

1. Vacuum it

After removing your mattress cover, take a pass with the vacuum cleaner first. You’ll get rid of those cracker crumbs from late night munching sessions, along with any other dirt, pet hair, and dust that’s accumulated over time.

Your vacuum cleaner’s upholstery attachment is your best tool for mattress cleaning. Start at the top of the mattress and work your way down in overlapping, narrow paths and then vacuum the sides the same way.

2. Deodorize with baking soda

Although we don’t usually notice our personal bodily smells, over time sweat can build up and lead to an unmistakable aroma. To rid your mattress of rankness, sprinkle it well with baking soda and gently rub it in with a scrub brush, so it gets into the mattress fabric where the stink lives. Let the baking soda sit for 10 minutes before proceeding to the next step.

3. Repeat vacuuming

By scrubbing the baking soda into your mattress, you’ve helped it bond with moisture and body oils in the top layers of material. Vacuuming it a second time pulls that moisture out, along with the cause of the odors.

4. Treat stains

How you clean, and what you use, will depend on the type of stain you’re dealing with. Unless you spilled red wine or coffee in bed, chances are good that they are protein-based stains of the bodily variety (we’re talking the good stuff here: sweat, urine, blood). They also probably aren’t new, which means they’ll be tougher to remove after having set and chemically bonded with the fabric.

Here are a couple of options:

Treat stains with a combination of hydrogen peroxide, liquid dish soap, and baking soda. Mix them into a spray bottle and treat the stained area. Blot and/or rub with a clean rag.

Use non-toxic, natural enzyme cleaners, that chemically break down stains and odors.

Make a paste of lemon juice and salt. Apply the mixture to the stain, and let it stand for 30–60 minutes. Wipe off salt with a clean towel.

5. Flip it and repeat steps 1-4

Your mattress should be flipped side-to-side and top-to-bottom weekly for the first three months of ownership, then quarterly after that.

While you’ve got the materials handy, repeat the cleaning process on the other side of your mattress.

6. Protect it

Since cleaning a mattress is such a daunting task, the best way is using a washable mattress cover.

Pop the mattress cover into the wash if you have a spill, and make laundering it part of your routine, so you’ll never have to know how to clean a mattress again.

7. Buy A Mattress that Cleans Itself

The easiest way to keep your mattress clean without monthly care is to get one that cleans itself. Our WHISPER mattress has a cover woven with real silver yarn, allowing it to ionize the sweat and dirt that seep into it to neutralize them, leaving you with a cleaner mattress at all times. It is hypoallergenic and made to resist dust mites, and the air channels that are found throughout WHISPER’s interior keep air flowing and moisture accumulation to a minimum, meaning that mold and unpleasant odors are a thing of the past. Click below to get yours now and if you don’t like it, we have a 100 night risk-free return policy!