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How to Get Rid of Cigarette Smell
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Getting Rid of Cigarette Smoke Smell for Non-Smokers
If you are a non-smoker, and have become the owner of a home, car, book, or sofa that once belonged to a smoker, you are likely here because you want to remove that awful cigarette smoke smell. Here are some suggestions:
Cigarette Smoke Smell in Furniture
- The Fabreeze Controversy
When confronted with any odor on furniture, curtains, or bed linens, the natural thing to do is reach for a deodorizer such as Fabreeze. Some argue that this simply masks the odor temporarily and it will return as soon as the spray product evaporates. There have also been reports of breathing problems associated with the use of fabreeze and other deodorizers. Others swear it doesn’t work anyway. It just turns the odor into a disgusting blend of smoke and the great outdoors. If the odor your battling is very weak, it’s worth a try. If it’s strong then don’t even bother. - Get it Steam Cleaned
Cigarette smoke smell in fabrics emanates from tar ash and oil deposits left in it’s fibers. In order to remove the smell, you need to remove these deposits. Unfortunately, when cigarette smoke condenses onto something, the resulting ‘goo’ is very, very stubborn. If you’ve ever cleaned (scraped) this residue off of glass or painted walls you know exactly how stubborn it can be – imagine that same goo stuck in every fiber of the piece of furniture you wish to clean. The bottom line is that household cleaners just won’t cut it, hire some professionals to come and clean it for you. Make sure they use a van-mounted steam cleaner and tell them exactly what your objective is so they can use the appropriate cleaning solution. - Low Budget?
Completely cover the piece of furniture you’re cleaning with baking soda and then rub it and pat it into the fabric so it gets as far into it as possible. Let it sit overnight and then vacuum it all back up. - Get Rid of it
This is not meant to be flip, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses. When cigarette smoke gets deeply enmeshed into the fabric of an ex-smokers favorite couch, there may be nothing that will ever get it out. Unless you enjoy reupholstering furniture, you might just have to throw it away. Better yet, sell it to a smoker.
Removing Cigarette Smoke Smell from Carpets
Carpets aren’t as hard as walls, but they’re still a lot of work.
- Rent a Shampooer
Most home improvement stores have carpet shampooers available for rental. Go pick one up, along with a bottle or so of shampoo, and get to work. A good carpet shampooer can remove the cigarette smell, but it may take several passes through each room to get it all. To make your job easier, sprinkle baking soda liberally over your entire carpet the night before you plan on shampooing, and vacuum it up just before using the carpet shampooer. - Call in the Professionals
Get the carpets a serious and professional cleaning. Hire a carpet cleaning company that uses van-mount steam cleaners. Tell them exactly what your goal is so they can use the appropriate cleaning agent when they arrive. If you have furniture to de-smokify, make sure they use smaller upholstery attachments and not the huge vacuum-like wand they use on your carpets. - Low Budget?
Fill a large tub with bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), add a few drops of essential oil and mix well. Lavender smells nice, but the flavor is up to you. Sprinkle the mixture liberally over the carpet, let it sit for at least four hours and then just vacuum it up. Repeat as necessary.
Cleaning Cigarette Smoke Residue from Walls
Cleaning a smoker’s house is a nightmare, brown and yellow stains will be on everything from the windows to that intricate crown molding. Unless you’re willing to hire somebody else for the task, get ready for a lot of work.
- Vinegar
Next to Italian salad dressings, this may be vinegar’s most important job. Even if you are going to paint the walls, you still need to clean them first. In a large bowl or bucket mix one cup of white vinegar for every two cups of warm water, then add a scoop of baking soda – it should fizz. Use a sponge mop or brush to wash down your walls and ceilings with it. This solution will make residue much easier to remove and should be easy on your paint too. Follow this up with a vinegar based window washer for windows (can be found in organic grocery stores), and your basic bubbly vinegar/baking soda mix on the window moldings. - Paint
If you’re still not happy with the result, you can attempt the last step again, or just repaint your walls.
Removing Cigarette Smoke Smell from your Car
- Good old Vinegar
The same mixture of vinegar and baking soda that you used on the walls inside the house can work on the interior of the car (one cup of white vinegar for every two cups of warm water along with a good scoop of baking soda). Wash down the windows, plastic moldings, and metals with a generous amount on a sponge. Don’t use this on fabric, however. Treat fabric as you would carpet inside – saturate it with baking soda, spray with a diluted solution of essential oil and water (optional), let sit overnight, and vacuum. - Cigarette Smoke Smell Home Remedies:
There are almost as many cigarette smell removal remedies as there are people. Some of the ideas appear to mask the smell with another more powerful odor rather than to remove, so be sure you are going to be happy with the result. Here are some of them: - Fill a tub with vinegar and place it on the floor in the front seat, close the windows, open the floor vents and turn on the heat full blast. Let the car run in this state for an hour before removing the tub. Another version of this remedy requires hot summer weather and allowing the tub sit on the floor with the windows closed all day.
- Leave an opened bag of charcoal in the car overnight.
- Put a few drops of vanilla extract on a rag and toss it under the seat.
- Put a sliced apple in a cup and set it on the floor. Leave it until it shrivels.
- Sprinkle dry coffee grounds on the floor of the car, let them sit there for a few days and vacuum them up.
- Mix of apple sauce and cinnamon and put it into a jar with holes punched in the lid. Place the jar on the floor of the car.
Which ever method you try, be prepared for several re-applications. You are going to most likely need them. If you have any tips to make this easier, please share them with the rest of us using the form below. Good luck!
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I had a friend take my car to a company in Anaheim ca where they replaced the filter (air filter) and cleanned the interior with a baking soda solution including the top cloth and sprayed baking soda on all carpeta areas. My friend says they also vacuum the solution and then run the AC on high for 1/2 hr with an air cleaner in the filter. It worked great!!! This service varies between $40 to $60 dlls depending on the car and problem. The company is called Air Brigth in Anaheim CA. Good Luck
***TO GET THE SMOKE SMELL OUT OF CLOTHES***
Hate coming home from a pub reeking of second hand smoke?
Hang your clothes over a radiator heater over night. This really works, promise.
as far as keeping the smell off your person, especially if you are at work or in an environment with other people, i’ve found that simply washing your hands with soap works wonders. most of my co-workers didn’t even know i smoked for the longest because i always do this after i smoke when i’m in public. (if someone already said this — my bad! i didn’t read all the comments.)
There are a number of things that can be done to remove smoke odor. Some will work on their own, but together they almost always do the trick. At Paul Davis Restoration of Broward we employ three key techniques. 1) Fog the affected area with special liquids formulated to fight odors. This techniques breaks the liquid into micro fine particles that are much smaller than smoke/soot particles. A fair comparison might be a pin head to a baseball. The smaller particle gets into the micro fine nooks and crannies to eliminate the bad smell. 2) Ozone generators - are very effective, but should be used by professionals. 3) Finally, the average persone can do this one by themselves. Prime the walls with SHELLAC. There are many manufacturers, Bins by Zinzzer is the one we use. Shellac is non-pourus and will not allow the smoke smell through. It basically permanently seals over the bad smell. Kills is not a shallac.
MoMo
Hint for kissing a smoker
Have your boyfriend carry tic tac’s mint flavor, the white ones, around when you want to kiss …have it eat one first. also the cinnamon’s ones work.
Ok I have a question. I go see my best friend, who does not live in the same area as me, and her uncle is a heavy chain smoker. When I come back from seeing her, everything I brought with me (Backpack, headphones, etc) is just soaked in cigarette smoke smell. I want to get it out, without having to replace everything, and don’t know how. Can anyone help me?
I don’t have a tip, but a problem. I recently moved into an apartment where there is no doubt the previous owners were smokers. initially when i saw the place, it was clean, convenient, and affordable. it had the new paint smell so i figure it would go aways when i moved it a week later. well, guess what, that paint smell was actually the nicotine.
i’ve asked the apt.management about perhaps helping me with this issue. i asked to be moved to another unit, but was told there was nothing available, and asked if they can changed the carpet. not sure how much longer i can take of this smell. everything smells, my sofas, clothes…etc… urgh! this is so frustrating cuz i have 5 yr old son that smells like Newports…yuck! i’ve tried everything, even pine sol’d the walls, nothing!
how long does smoke smell stay in an apt? and i can smell it circulating in the vents too, how do i get that out? help, im desperate!
i just quit smoking after 30 years no pills no cttim down
i tryed so may times this time i just quit!!!
and my apartment smells so bad iam just about ready to move
ive tryed all this stuff all it does is make your house smell
like some thing eles for awhile then the oder comes back
Getting Ciggarette Smell Off Of Walls/Ceilings/Moldings:
I was a smoker for many years and had to learn the hard way about why smoking in your home is such a terrible idea.
For those who have been trying desperately to get that smell off the walls, ceilings and moldings, and despite scrubbing with everything you can find or that people have suggested, the surfaces are shiny clean but the smell still lingers, here’s why:
The Tar and Nicotene permeates the pores of the pain or wallpaper. You will never get it all out, no matter how hard you scrub or what chemical you use - there will always be some left over, embedded deep inside and ready to seep out to take the place of the layer you just scrubed off.
Washing with anything will also activate older, dry and inert mollecules of Tar, which will often itensify the smell - backfire!
This is also true if you paint over it. You can’t just put on a fresh coat of paint and hope it will go away. Within about a year, the tar from underneath will have permeated through the pores of the fresh coat and your nasty smell is back again! Maybe not as bad this time, but if you’re sensitive to it any amount is terrible.
TSP is a good temporary solution, it cleans a bit deeper and will get rid of the smell for about a month or so, but it also doesn’t to a complete job. Plus, TSP is a Phosphate (Tri-Sodium Phosphate). It’s highly toxic, volitile and dangerous. You will need to use careful safety precautions to use it, you can’t just wash it down the drain, you have to contact your town to safely dispose of used or extra chemical (usually costing you a disposal fee) and if you have pets you shouldn’t use it at all or you can risk killing them.
The only real solution here is to use a special Sealer/Primer before you paint, then paint over that. This will seal all the Tar and Nicotene residue under the Primer and keep it from seeping through your new paint.
WM Zissner makes an excellent Sealer/Primer that is specially formulated for exactly the purpose of sealing in Tar and Nicotene stains and odors. It’s an oil-based primer, but it can be used over any original surface, even if the original paint was Acrylic. You also don’t need to sand first, it has excellent adhesion without sanding. Best of all, while it is an oil based primer, it dries in one hour allowing you to start painting the same day. You can also use any kind of paint as a top-coat, even acrylic. This primer is available at any major Hardware store or Paint Supply store.
Another tip:
A friend of mine, not a smoker, recently bought a new house from a couple who were smokers. They never smoked in the house, so it didn’t smell. But, after my friend moved in, they found that the closets had a strong odor that transferred to their own clothes! It reeked every time they opened the closet door.
No matter what you do, as a smoker your clothes will always have some taint of Tar. That will transfer into the closets you keep our clothes in. As a new buyer, always check the closets. If they smell when the rest of the house doesn’t, have it written into the offer that the sellers must seal and reapaint the closets before closing. If you’ve already bought and have the same problem, you can follow the advice for painting your closets, above.
Keep in mind, it won’t be enough to repaint just the walls. You will have to paint the ceilings, cabinets, doors, moldings and window sashes as well. If you have wood floors, you may need to re-varnish. If you have carpet, try a deep steam cleaning with some vinegar in the mix, but you may need to get new carpets to completely get rid of it. And don’t forge your closets.
[...] Odor | How To Do Things.com How do you get the smell of cigarette smoke out of walls and fabric? How to Get Rid of Cigarette Smell How to Remove Cigarette Smoke Odor — Heloise Hints - [...]
I dont have a tip, just a question. What would work best for getting this smell out of a matress and box springs? My husband and I just bought a very nice used set for hardly any money and it is really bad, we smell like smoke when we get out of bed, we have only used it two nights. I really hate to throw money away since we are both currently unemployed and money is tight, any suggesttions are welcome! Thanks in advance for your help.
the apartment we moved in to is infested with smoke. the smell is endless and everytime we come in it smells like someone just got done lighting up. we have tried vinegar in bowls across the apartment, washed the walls ceiling to floor wall to wall with vinegar, used the baking soda on the carpet, gone through several bottles of deodorizers, and tried airing out the house. nothing is working. i am out of ideas!!
I use plain ol’ 20 Mule Team Borax in my bucket of woolite and hot water inside smoke “scented” cars that I detail. Works fantastic and is simply simple. On leather upholstery, I just use a yummy smelling leather cleaner. My favorite is Meguiar’s.
This page will tell how to get smoke odor out of your clothes..
In fact, it tells you many ways on using vinegar..
http://www.vinegarbook.net/vinegar_book_odors_page_2.shtml
okay so it’s not really a tip.. it’s more of a question… someone once told me that if i sprinkle the carpets with baking soda and the furniture that it will help get rid of the smell of smoke from the room & the air, too… they said that it will draw it in…..
Also, i read somewhere that vinegar is also another good way to get rid of the smell cus it draws it in……
Will feebreeze also work, too.. i mean if i use baking soda on the carpets & furniture… and if i also use vinegar…
please comment.. ty
oh, can you use vinegar to get rid of the smell of stinky clothes???
It’s not really a tip but I was woundering if anyone knows if the vinager in a bowl really works with the smoke smell and if so then would that bowl and anouther bowl with baking soda work….I just really need to find a way to get rid of the smell with out going outside (which is not an option in my case) and well of course I am not yet ready to quit smoking so…if any one can help me please email me with ur suggestions at lilcogger_gurl@live.ca thank you
Shana, Don’t be such a brat. Smokers can do what they want and it isn’t fair. I am allergic to your whining but I realize that its your right to whine. I deal with you. Now it’s your turn. You got a lot of growing up to do.
I really don’t have a tip, but i recently got my own apartment and the guy that lived here before had to have smoked 1 to 2 packs a day. On top of that, i have a six monthold daughter and i’m sick of her clothes smelling like she sleeps in a cigarette box.
I’m not allowed to paint, i’ve tried all kinds of candles and fragrances but nothing has worked long-term. HELP!!
I smoked for about 18 or 19 years. I quit 7 months ago. One tip I recommend for all smokers: ALWAYS wash your hands after smoking!! Also, carry a bottle of hand gel with you at all times. I recommend you try the 3 oz. bottle of Warm vanilla sugar anti-bacterial deep cleansing hand gel (available at Bath & Body Works for like $4). After a cigarette, I’d slather this all over my hands and presto - no smell! If you have long hair, tie it up whenever you go out to smoke. This will greatly reduce the smoky hair problem.
My car had a faint stale smoke smell for a long time, even though I always had the windows open when I smoked. Now, I just try to leave the windows open as much as possible and before I vacuum out my car, I shake a powder deodorizer (designed for pet odors) on the floor & let it sit there for awhile. It also helps to have air fresheners all throughout the car. Again, I opt for a vanilla scent. Also, I recommend placing fabric softener sheets under the car seats. Now that I am smoke free for over 1/2 a year, the smell is finally dissipating from my car.
You know, I can’t believe that I read some posts on here in which people stated that quitting smoking is easy. I disagree - It is very difficult, and even now, months later, sometimes the urge is still there. Non-smokers will never understand that feeling. But, in the end, it was worth quitting. I don’t judge smokers, having been one for more than half of my life. However, I was always a considerate smoker and would never smoke in the presence of a non-smoker unless they didn’t mind. Smokers out there: remember to be polite and courteous — always smoke outside regardless of the weather and never smoke around children or animals!
I recieved a piece of wood furniture that had been in a smokers home. I tried murphy’s oil soap on it and it seemed to release more of the odor into the air of my bedroom. I am not a smoker and this really upset me. I set the piece out side and bombed it inside and out with Odo Ban every six hours. The finish wasn’t great on this piece and I’m planning to refinish it eventually so I wasn’t scared of that. So far it is working. Just to be safe I’m going to keep it outside for 3 more days just to be sure. But it seems to be working. That smell of cigarette smoke is just nasty. Right up there with the smell of skunk or roadkill!