How do I repair a burn or hole in a carpet?

A carpet plug repair is genuinely invisible when the pile direction matches and the patch is cut cleanly. It fails when either of those is wrong, and both are easy to get right.

What you'll need

• A sharp carpet knife or a plug cutter
• A donor piece from a hidden area
• Double-sided carpet tape or latex seam adhesive
• A weight
• Scissors

Step by step

1. Assess the damage.A cigarette burn, a bleach mark or a small hole plugs beautifully. A large tear, a worn traffic path, or damage across a seam does not.
2. Try trimming first for a light burn.A surface scorch on a cut pile carpet often responds to snipping the burnt tips off with small scissors. It takes two minutes and may be the whole repair.
3. Find the pile direction.Run your hand across the carpet. It looks light one way and dark the other. Mark the direction with chalk arrows on the back of the donor piece and on the floor beside the hole.
4. Choose the donor location.Inside a fitted wardrobe, under a radiator, in a corner behind a door, or the offcut from the original fitting. Never take it from anywhere visible.
5. Cut the hole square or round.A plug cutter gives a perfect circle. Otherwise use a straight edge and a sharp knife, cutting from the front, through the backing but not into the underlay.
6. Cut the plug from the same template.Use the removed piece as the pattern, or cut both with the same plug cutter, so they match exactly.
7. Check the pile direction before fixing.Drop the plug in and look at it from across the room and from both directions. Turn it 90 degrees and look again. It only looks right one way.
8. Fix it from underneath.Double-sided carpet tape across the hole, or a strip of hessian with latex adhesive. Fixing from above with anything visible ruins the repair.
9. Work the pile together.Once the plug is down, tease the fibres at the joint with a blunt tool so the pile from each side interlocks and the cut line disappears.
10. Weight it while it sets.A book on a piece of card for a few hours. Latex adhesive needs time to grab.
11. Repair the donor hole.Fill it with any spare carpet, or leave it if it is under a wardrobe. It does not need to be invisible.

Tips

• A carpet plug cutter costs very little and makes the difference between a good repair and an excellent one, because both cuts come out identical.
• Take the donor from the offcut if the fitter left one. Same batch, same age, same wear, and no second hole.
• For a bleach mark on a plain carpet, specialist carpet dye pens exist and can work well. They are worth trying before cutting anything.

Common mistakes

• Fitting the plug with the pile running the wrong way — Carpet pile reflects light directionally, so a plug rotated 180 degrees reads as a completely different shade from across the room. It is the single most common reason a technically perfect patch is obvious.
• Gluing the plug in from the top — Any adhesive that reaches the pile mats the fibres, catches dirt and leaves a hard, shiny ring around the patch. All the fixing has to be under the backing.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask