Wax comes out with gentle heat and absorbent paper. Gum comes out with cold, which makes it brittle enough to break off. Get the two the wrong way round and you will spread both.
Both are genuinely doable at home on a synthetic carpet. The catch with coloured candles is that the dye may stay behind after the wax has gone, and that residue is a different job entirely.
Candle wax, the low heat method
Work at the lowest heat that softens the wax. Anything hotter risks melting synthetic fibre tips, which cannot be reversed.
- Let the wax harden completely, then chip off as much as you can with a blunt edge.
- Lay clean brown paper or a plain white paper towel over the residue.
- Press with a warm, not hot, iron for a few seconds at a time.
- Move to a clean part of the paper as wax transfers, and keep repeating.
- Never use a steam setting, and never hold the iron still on the pile.
Chewing gum, the freeze method
Cold makes gum brittle, and brittle gum breaks cleanly instead of stringing.
- Put ice cubes in a plastic bag and hold it on the gum for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Do not put ice directly on the carpet, meltwater spreads the problem.
- Once solid, break the gum up with a blunt edge and lift the pieces out.
- Vacuum the fragments before they warm up again.
- Blot any remaining sticky film with a barely damp cloth.
The bits that need us
Both methods are worth trying yourself on a synthetic carpet, and we would rather tell you that than take a small booking you did not need.
Call in help when the carpet is wool, viscose or silk, when a coloured candle has left dye behind, when wax has soaked into a rug fringe, or when someone has already tried an iron on a high setting and glazed the pile.