Cleaning Tips

Airbnb Cleaning Experts Talk White Towel Stains

A comprehensive guide on how to clean and prevent staining your white towels.

By Assaf Karmon

Last updated: October 31, 2023

Every vacation rental cleaner or host has been in this situation, a guest has wiped their makeup on a white towel, and the stain does not come off easily. This is one of those things airbnb cleaning professionals talk about all the time!

How to Clean

What can you do as a vacation rental host to deal with this? Some of our most experienced Airbnb cleaners in Denver have suggested pretreating the fabric with dishwasher detergent. Dishwasher detergent is a powerful degreaser that dissolves fat, a significant component in makeup. Let the white towel soak for 10 minutes before washing and wash with extra hot water and bleach. You can even add some extra boiling water to the machine to make sure the water is sufficiently hot.

Different Colors

If this sounds complicated, you can always avoid white towels altogether. Our vacation rental cleaning experts in Miami Florida suggest using dark-colored towels. When these get stained, it is harder to notice and easier to clean. Avoiding treating stains make your turnover service shorter and less costly and possibly saving you money, not to mention that you need to buy towels less often. Dark-colored towels are less than ideal aesthetically since they don’t provide the same clean feeling a white towel offers. For this reason, if you are providing a luxury vacation rental experience, it may be best to stick to white towels and accept it as the cost of doing business.

Prevention

Yet another method of dealing with stains on white towels is prevention. Our short-term cleaning pros in Los Angeles recommend that you make sure to provide your guests with clear instructions and provide them with makeup wipes and or makeup towels(not white of course!) to make it easier to comply. You can take one step further by leaving a nice card in the bathroom asking to be considerate. If you do decide to write a card use a passive and calm tone for maximum results.

If you have suggestions for our next blog post about vacation rental cleaning make sure to comment below!

Assaf Karmon Avatar
Assaf Karmon , Born in Israel, Assaf studied computer science at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Following college, he moved to the U.S. and worked for a few startups in New York City before relocating to Boston to work as an engineer at Nokia. Ultimately, his academic pursuits led him to the University of Hawaii where he earned his MBA from the Shidler College of Business. While in business school, he met his soon-to-be business partner, Tim Roy. Building a software business has always enticed Assaf. In their final semester of business school, he and Tim developed a business plan that would eventually become Turno. In June 2017, Turno launched as the premier tool for short-term rental hosts and cleaners to connect, automate, and operationalize the management of vacation rental cleanings. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his two daughters and cheering for Manchester City.