How to Get Dog Pee Smell & Stains Out of a Mattress: 8 Effective Steps

Owning a dog has many benefits and challenges, including urine stains when accidents happen. Urine leaves unpleasant colors and lingering odors that can make your mattress unsightly and unappealing. Getting stains out of your mattress doesn’t have to be complicated. You can even do it without having to purchase harsh commercial cleaning products. It is best to clean dog urine out of your mattress immediately after the accident happens, to ensure that the stain doesn’t seep into the material of your bed. So, once you discover the accident, set to work using these quick steps to clean the stain and dog pee smell out of your mattress.

What You'll Need

The best thing you can do to eliminate and prevent stains and lingering odors is to invest in a pet-friendly cleaner like an enzyme cleaner. The active ingredients, although natural most of the time, are highly effective in breaking down the compounds in dog urine that can reappear time after time.

Our Favorite Cleaner

Hepper Advanced Bio-Enzyme Pet Stain & Odor Eliminator Spray is our favorite all-purpose cleaner for pet messes. It permanently lifts the very worst stains and odors, making clean-up and accident prevention a breeze. Hepper offers a 100% guarantee, which is a great bonus! Learn more about it here.

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The 8 Steps to Get Dog Pee Smell & Stains Out of a Mattress

1. Remove the sheets and bedding.

Immediately after discovering the accident, remove all of your bedding. You need to strip your mattress of any of the sheets or blankets on the bed at the time of the accident. Urine stains set quickly, so you need to instantly get these washable items into the washing machine with medium-strength laundry detergent.

Once you wash your bedding once, the urine smell could still linger or the stain might still be somewhat visible. If that is the case for you, add a cup of white vinegar into the mix and rewash them.

2. Go back to the mattress and blot, blot, blot.

Use paper towels so you don’t soak up the urine with any of your other clean, usable towels. Blot the soiled area. You might have to use quite a few, depending on how much excess liquid is on the mattress. Do not scrub the spot. Scrubbing only pushes the fluid further into the fabric. The deeper it goes, the harder it will be to remove the stain and odor thoroughly.

3. Make a vinegar solution or prep enzyme cleaner.

Vinegar is one of those “ultimate” cleaning solutions. No matter how bad the smell or the stain, vinegar can help you get rid of it. However, when it comes to pet urine, may not be as effective as an enzyme cleaner but should do the trick in an emergency.

To create your own cleaner, take your prepared spray bottle and pour in 2 cups of cold water. Add 1 cup of white vinegar and 2 to 3 tablespoons of laundry detergent. Mix it around by swirling; don’t shake it. Since the detergent will want to bubble up, it can increase the bottle’s pressure too much. If you do have an enzyme spray, make sure you dilute it if needs to be.

• Best Enzyme Cleaners for Dog Urine- Vet-Reviewed & Top Picks

4. Soak the mattress with the vinegar solution or enzyme cleaner.

Liberally spray the vinegar solution or enzyme spray over the stain, all the way to the edges. Soak it to get the vinegar solution to dilute down to whatever level the stain is at and break up the odorous molecules. You can repeat this process if you feel it needs a second pass.

5. Give the solution time to soak.

Once you have soaked the urine-stained mattress with the vinegar, allow it to sit and soak in for 10 to 15 minutes.

6. Blot the mattress over again.

Using a clean cloth or more paper towels, blot the area of your vinegar and soak once again. After you have let it rest, it shouldn’t be completely dry. Instead, this should have brought up any further urine on the surface and underneath and with it, the smell.

7. Bring out the baking soda.

Now is the time to cover the whole soiled area with baking soda. Allow it to sit there for at least 8 hours and up to 10. Do not let any pets or kids get into the baking soda mess that you have created.

Baking soda is one of the most effective cleaning solutions for getting odors out of fabrics. The vinegar solution should have helped you clean the soiled area, and this step guarantees that you won’t continue to smell past accidents later.

8. Vacuum and clean the baking soda.

Bring out the vacuum, and use a hose attachment to suck up the mess in a matter of minutes. If the baking soda is not entirely dry, allow it to sit for longer. If the powder isn’t dry, you will risk ruining your vacuum when it gets clogged up with the damp powder.

If you need the bed to be ready earlier, you can use a wet/dry vacuum to clean up damp powder.

If accidents happen frequently and you’re unsure of what’s causing them or how to prevent them, a consult with your vet could help!

Repeat It or Finish the Job

From here, your options are to repeat steps 4 through 8 or to put the bedding back on the bed. Decide which suits your needs by carefully inspecting the mattress for any lingering smells or visual evidence of the stain. If the room still has traces of the smell, use an air purifier to reduce the doggy odor.

If the area was caught quickly, you should only need to go through the steps once. If your dog has incontinence issues, it's best to keep them out of the bedroom and off the bed unless you monitor them. Even then, it might not be worth it.

Whatever happens, as long as you catch the accident early and begin the cleaning process immediately, you should be able to eradicate all evidence.

See also:

• Step-By-Step Guide to Removing Dog Pee Smell Out of Your Car

• How to Get Dog Pee Smell & Stains Out of Shoes and Boots

Featured Image Credit: cunaplus, Shutterstock