How much does it cost to hire a carpet cleaner?

Rug Doctor’s standard machine costs from £27.99 for 24 hours or from £32.99 for 48 hours, as its site showed on 26 October 2026. Its own detergent is extra, from £10.99, and the upholstery hand tool adds £4.99. These are “from” prices, so check the price at your nearest outlet before you go.

Can you use a carpet cleaner on a wool carpet?

A fitted wool carpet, yes, with care, unless its maker’s care guide says otherwise: Rug Doctor says wool can be cleaned with extra care in lukewarm water, and Vax says WoolSafe approves its solutions for wool carpets. Keep wet passes to a minimum, and leave wool or silk oriental rugs, which Rug Doctor lists as unsuitable, to a rug specialist. For a valuable wool carpet, or one you are unsure about, use a WoolSafe Approved Service Provider.

Can you clean a whole carpet with a spot cleaner?

You can, but it is slow going. The Bissell SpotClean ProHeat holds 1.1 litres of clean water, against 3.5 litres in a full-size washer such as the Vax Platinum Power Max, and Bissell lists it for spots, stairs, upholstery and cars rather than whole rooms. For a room, hire or buy a full-size machine.

Is it worth buying a carpet cleaner, or hiring one?

Q: Can I use my own shampoo in a hired carpet cleaner?

No. Rug Doctor says to use only its own detergents in its machines, and warns that others, laundry detergent included, will damage the machine and possibly your carpet. The same goes for a machine you own: put in only the solution its maker names.

Hire a carpet washer if you clean whole rooms once or twice a year. Buy a spot cleaner if the regular job is spills on stairs, sofas and car seats, and buy a full-size washer only if you would otherwise hire one several times over the years you’d keep it. Pay a professional for sisal, seagrass, coir, jute and viscose, wool you aren’t sure about, heavy soiling, or a carpet whose warranty asks for it. The prices below are from the hire firm’s and the makers’ own UK sites on 26 October 2026, and the specifications are theirs: we haven’t tested these machines.

Hire, buy or pay a professional

Four things decide it.

How often the job comes round. Once or twice a year suits a hire machine. Spills every week suit a spot cleaner kept in the cupboard.
What the carpet is made of. Every home machine sprays water into the pile, and some carpets can’t take it.
How dirty it is. Heavy soiling and stains that keep coming back are where a professional earns the fee.
Where you’d keep it. A full-size washer needs a cupboard: the Vax Platinum Power Max, a mid-range model, weighs 9.6kg.

What hiring costs, and what you get

Rug Doctor hires its machines through supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda, or delivers them to your door. Its hire page gave these prices on 26 October 2026:

Standard machine: from £27.99 for 24 hours, or from £32.99 for 48 hours.
Wide Track machine: from £28.99 for 24 hours, or from £32.99 for 48 hours.
Upholstery hand tool, for sofas, mattresses and the car: £4.99 extra.
Detergent: sold beside the hire stands in store and on Rug Doctor’s site, where Carpet Detergent with Spotblok costs from £10.99. Rug Doctor says a litre cleans two rooms.

A day with the standard machine and a litre of detergent comes to £38.98, or £43.97 with the upholstery tool.

For that you get a full-size machine that sprays water and detergent into the pile and sucks it back up, with nothing to store afterwards. Rug Doctor says to use only its own detergents, because others, laundry detergent included, “will damage the machine and possibly your carpets”. You fill it with hot tap water, not hot enough to scald, and 150ml of detergent (225ml in the Wide Track), and Rug Doctor says to use lukewarm water on wool. To hire, Rug Doctor asks for two forms of ID: if you pay by card, photo ID such as a passport or a full driving licence, and the card itself. Return the machine before the hire runs out.

What buying costs: spot cleaners and full-size machines

Spot cleaners

A spot cleaner is a small machine with a hand tool, for spills, stairs, sofas and car seats. The Bissell SpotClean ProHeat, one of the machines in our Cupboard, costs £129.99 from Bissell, with a 1.1-litre clean water tank and a three-year warranty. Vax’s own SpotWash range ran from £79.99 to £249.99 on the same day.

Some spot cleaners keep the water warm as they run: Bissell’s HeatWave routes heat from the motor to the tank, and Bissell’s page doesn’t say whether it can be turned off. Heat sets blood and other protein stains, so treat those by hand with cold water first, as in our guide to getting blood out of clothes, sheets and carpet. A fresh spill often comes out by hand before any machine is needed: see how to get red wine out of carpet.

Full-size washers

A full-size washer does the hire machine’s job whenever you want it. Vax’s own site listed its carpet washers from £89.99 to £379.99, many of them reduced from a higher price. The Vax Platinum Power Max, a mid-range model, was £149.99, down from £269.99, with a 3.5-litre clean water tank, an upholstery tool and a six-year guarantee. Vax recommends its own solution for it, at £22.99 for 1.5 litres, and says WoolSafe approves its solutions for wool and synthetic carpets.

At that offer price the machine costs about the same as four days’ hire with detergent, before you buy its solution. Buying also means a cupboard big enough for it, solution to keep in, and the tanks to empty and rinse after every clean.

The options side by side

Prices as the hire firm’s and makers’ UK sites showed them on 26 October 2026.

Option	What it costs	Best for	Watch out for
Hire a full-size washer	From £27.99 for 24 hours, plus detergent from £10.99	Whole rooms once or twice a year	Only the hire firm’s detergent goes in
Buy a full-size washer	£149.99 for the Vax Platinum Power Max on offer; Vax’s from £89.99	Whole rooms several times a year	Storage, solution and emptying the tanks
Buy a spot cleaner	£129.99 for the Bissell SpotClean ProHeat; Vax’s from £79.99	Spills, stairs, sofas, car seats	Slow for a whole room on a 1.1L tank
Pay a professional	A written quote, often after a visit	Natural fibres, wool, heavy soiling	Check training, insurance and method

Carpets to keep home machines off

Every one of these machines wets the carpet, so the carpet decides first.

Sisal, seagrass, coir and jute. Water can mark plant fibres and change their colour. WoolSafe’s guide to fine fibres puts dry, low-moisture methods first and sends a deep clean to a professional.
Viscose rugs, often sold as art silk or bamboo silk. Wetting can distort the pile.
Silk, velvet and any fabric that marks with water. Vax lists these as unsuitable for its machines.
Antique, hand-knotted or valuable rugs. Take them to a rug specialist.
Mixed fibres. WoolSafe’s advice is to treat a carpet as its most water-sensitive fibre.

Rug Doctor’s own FAQ lists oriental rugs (silk or wool), dry-clean-only carpets, sisal or jute carpets and Berber, a looped pile, among the ones its machines aren’t for. Fitted wool carpet is a different matter: Rug Doctor says it can be cleaned “with extra care”, in lukewarm water. Use a solution approved for wool and as few wet passes as you can manage, and read the carpet maker’s care guide first. If your carpet came with a warranty, read its cleaning conditions before you hire anything, since some ask for professional cleaning. The fitter’s paperwork, or the label on the back of a rug, should say what it is made of.

Using any machine without over-wetting

Over-wetting is the usual way a home clean goes wrong. Water that soaks through to the backing and underlay dries slowly and can wick dirt back up as brown marks, and the National Carpet Cleaners Association lists over-wetting among the common DIY mistakes, with poor rinsing and the wrong chemicals.

Read the machine’s manual and the carpet’s care guide, and test the machine on a hidden corner first.
Vacuum thoroughly, so the machine works on the dirt in the pile rather than loose grit on top.
Move the furniture out, or into the middle of the room and clean around it.
Treat stains by hand first. Let mud dry and vacuum it up before any water reaches it, as in the Stain Finder’s method for mud.
Fill the tank as the manual says, never with boiling water, and with lukewarm water on wool. Measure the solution, because extra detergent stays in the pile and attracts dirt.
Make one slow wet pass, walking backwards, then go over the same strip with the spray off to lift more water. Rug Doctor’s machines are designed for one wet pass, with dry passes if the carpet gets too wet.
Open the windows, and keep children and pets off until the carpet is completely dry. Rug Doctor puts that at around two to four hours after one of its cleans, depending on ventilation, heating and the weather.
Put the furniture back once the carpet is dry. Anything that has to stand on it while it is damp goes on squares of foil, because metal feet leave rust rings on damp carpet.

When a professional is worth paying for

A professional is worth the money when:

the carpet is sisal, seagrass, coir, jute or viscose, or wool you aren’t sure about;
it is heavily soiled, or stains keep coming back after a home clean;
its warranty or care guide asks for professional cleaning;
you are moving out of a rented home and want the carpets back to the standard of the check-in inventory, which our end of tenancy cleaning checklist goes through room by room.

The National Carpet Cleaners Association’s answers on choosing a member are a good place to start. Its directory finds members within 10 miles, and it suggests contacting one to three of them. Members have passed at least an entry-level training course and an exam, hold public liability insurance and follow its Code of Practice. Many can’t quote without seeing the carpet first, and the association recommends a detailed inspection before any work begins. For wool and natural fibres, WoolSafe lists approved cleaners who use WoolSafe-approved products. Whoever you choose, ask which method they will use, how long the carpet will take to dry, and what the quote includes.

More on carpets, rugs and hard floors is in Floors & Carpets.