Why air fresheners and candles don’t get rid of smoke smell
Smoke is made of tiny particles and an oily residue that settle on and soak into everything in the room. Air fresheners, candles and plug-ins add another scent on top. The residue stays where it is, and as soon as the fragrance fades, the smoke smell is back.
Opening windows helps air out the room, but it doesn’t pull residue out of carpet pad or couch cushions. The only lasting fix is removing the residue from the materials that are holding it.
Where does smoke odor hide in a house?
Smell comes back from the places that soak things up. The usual suspects:
- Carpet and pad: residue settles into the fibers and works down into the pad
- Drapes and curtains: lots of fabric surface area, right where air moves
- Upholstered furniture: cushions, backs and the padding underneath
- Walls and ceilings: a thin film that’s easy to miss on painted drywall
- HVAC system: ducts and the filter pick up residue and blow the smell back out every time the system runs
- Closets and cabinets: clothes, linens and the insides of cabinet doors
Getting smoke smell out after a house fire
After a fire, odor removal is one part of a bigger cleanup. Soot has to come off first, and any water from putting the fire out has to be dried. If you’re still at that stage, start with our fire and smoke cleanup page.
Once the soot is cleaned, a lingering smell usually means residue is still in a soft material or the ducts. We go room by room until we find it.
How to get rid of smoke smell after a kitchen fire or burnt food
A small stove fire or a pot that boiled dry can fill the whole house with smell. Kitchen smoke is often greasy, so it leaves a sticky film on cabinets, walls and the range hood, and it drifts into the living room couch and drapes.
Cleaning the kitchen surfaces handles most of it. If the smell is still strong in other rooms a few days later, the fabric in those rooms is likely holding it.
Cigarette smoke odor in homes and rentals
Years of indoor smoking leave a yellow-brown film on walls and ceilings and a smell that’s deep in the carpet and furniture. It’s common in homes people have just bought and in rentals between tenants.
For a house with long-term tobacco smoke, cleaning and deodorizing makes a big difference, but walls and ceilings often still need to be sealed and painted afterward to fully lock in what’s soaked into the drywall. If you manage rentals, our make-ready cleaning page covers turnover work.
Wildfire smoke drifting into your house
When wildfire smoke settles over East Tennessee, it gets into homes through doors, windows and the HVAC system. Usually it’s a lighter smell, and a lot of it airs out once the outside air clears. If it doesn’t, it’s typically sitting in the HVAC filter, drapes and upholstery, and those are what we clean.
Change your HVAC filter once the smoke has passed. It’s cheap and often makes a noticeable difference by itself.
How much smoke smell can actually be removed?
We’ll be honest with you. Light smoke from a short event often comes out completely. Heavy smoke, a fire close to the room, or many years of tobacco smoke may leave some odor in materials that can’t be fully cleaned, like carpet pad, insulation or porous drywall. Sometimes replacing the pad or sealing a wall is the step that finishes the job.
We’ll tell you what we expect before we start, and we guarantee our work: if something isn’t right, we come back and make it right.