Candles can prove to be very useful when the electricity goes out. While using candlelight, the candle may often burn out, and its wax leaves a stain on your clothes. Not to worry, there are several ways to get candle wax stains off any piece of clothing.
How to Get Candle Wax Out of Clothes Using Paper Towel
Here are steps to get candle wax out of clothes:
- Gather The Tools You Will Be Using
If your clothes get soiled by candle wax, locate your nearest store and acquire the following items. These items you will use in the process of removing the candle wax. They include; a simple paper towel, a thin towel or a handkerchief, a stain removal wash, a blotting paper, a spoon, knife, razor, or scissors.
- Allow Time For The Candle Wax on Your Cloth To Harden Up
When dealing with stains on clothes, such as color, drinks, food stains, etc., the best alternative is to clean them up as fast as possible. This is because it is very easy to remove stains on clothes when the stain has not had much time to soil the cloth deeply, compared to when the substances have had time to soil deeper into the cloth.
This is not usually the case when it comes to candle wax removal. When we get our clothes stained by candle wax, we may ignorantly want to head to the nearest water supply to get it cleaned. As smart as this action may feel, it should not be the case.
Due to the general nature of candle wax, the best thing you do first is to allow the candle wax that has soiled your clothes to harden up. When this happens, cleaning up the hardened candle wax becomes much easier than cleaning up the just soiled candle wax.
- Make Use of a Paper Towel or Blotting Paper
After scraping out the candle wax’s upper surface, you’re left with the lower part of the candle wax on your clothes. How then can you take this part out? Easy, steam it up and carefully soak the remaining part into the blotting paper you had acquired in method one.
Note that using a paper towel instead of blotting paper would be fine when dealing with general cloth materials. When you have to do with fabrics such as velvet material, fleece, or wool, which are generally fluffy, you should avoid using a paper towel. The reason is little fragments of the paper towel could get intertwined with the fabric fiber.
How to Get Candle Wax Out of Clothes Using Ice Cubes
See the steps to follow below:
- Get an Ice Cube
Candle wax gets hardened naturally if you leave it at a cool temperature for a while. A much more effective procedure for hardening the candle wax would be to use an ice cube. Placing a few ice cubes on the spot on the cloth soiled by the candle wax would get it hardened and dried more quickly.
- Remove The Hardened Candle Wax
After the candle wax has hardened up, the next procedure is to remove it. The moment the candle wax has hardened, it is easier to get rid of it from the cloth. Using a scraper, or any material of the sort, carefully scrape the hardened candle wax off your clothes. A sharp knife, razor, or scissors should do.
Scrape out the candle wax using a motion away from your skin so as not to cause any injury. This act would only successfully remove the top section of the candle wax, leaving behind the layer that has gone into the inner parts of the cloth. Note that your scraping tool must be fabric compatible.
Your fabric could suffer damage if you use a scraping tool that is not compatible with your fabric. For instance, using a sharp knife on a delicate fabric such as silk will most definitely damage the material. The edge of a tablespoon would do the work just fine when dealing with delicate fabrics like silk, light cotton, etc. Carefully skim through the surface of the affected region rather than scraping roughly.
- Heat it Up
Position your blotting paper or paper towel (depending on your use) beneath and above the candle wax residue region. Next, position the thin towel above the spot and press through the towel with your warm iron. The heat generated by the iron will melt the leftover residue of the candle wax, while the blotting paper would absorb this residue or what was left of the candle wax after scraping.
How to Remove Colored Candle Wax Stain From Clothes
If the candle wax that your clothes got stained by is colored and your material, on the other hand, has a light color making the colored candle wax stain visible enough. If the color of your material shares the same color as the candle wax color, then this method would be inconsequential to you.
Following method one above, most of the candle wax is already removed, leaving behind the dye color of the candle wax, which will be very obvious on the cloth. This is where you introduce the Stain removal wash.
- Apply The Stain Removal Wash
You can use any Stain Removal Wash acquired in method one to pre-treatment the dye color on the fabric. All you need do is pour some amount of the Stain Removal Wash on the soiled part of the material.
After doing this, allow a little time for the cloth to absorb the liquid (note that this would depend on the type of liquid you’re using and the material in question). Give the soiled region a rub until the stain is successfully cleared when this is done. Add a little more liquid and rub the soiled spot again if it remains.
- Your Clothes are Ready For a Wash
A fast machine for washing remains the last tool needed to conclude the last process for cleaning up any lingering candle wax residue or for colored candle wax, its dye from any soiled spot on your clothes.
First, set up your washing machine to the required setting suitable for the kind of stained fabric. Also, ensure to use a cloth detergent that is heightened enough to remove stains that may have remained effective.
- Examine Your Cloth After Washing
After successfully following through with the nine methods mentioned above for removing candle wax stain from your clothes, the final procedure after washing is to examine the cloth for any remaining stain.
Where any stain is still left behind on the cloth, the alternative here is to repeat the instruction mentioned above as applicable to the level of the stain remaining. When this is done, your clothes should be back to their original state without a stain.
If your clothes get stained by candle wax, or you know someone who has their clothes stained by candle wax, don’t just throw them away just yet. Follow the steps listed above, and you will successfully rid your clothes of any wax stain they may have sustained.