If you clean a natural fiber fabric that contains cellulose fibers such as cotton, linen, or regenerated cellulose such as rayon, there is always a risk of a condition known as cellulose browning.
If you use the new generation "dry" upholstery cleaning tools, such as the Upholstery Pro, and acidic cleaning detergents, your chance of causing browning is far less than it once was.
However, if you tend to clean all upholstery with "the same stuff" (usually an alkaline cleaner) and use old fashioned wet upholstery tools, browning still can occur. Should you ever cause browning on upholstery, follow these steps to correct it:
1. Remove the furniture from your customer's house whenever possible. Most browning removal procedures take repeated applications, and visiting a home several times is costly to you, and annoying for your customer (which means it can become VERY costly to you if they tire of your visits before you have solved the problem.)
2. Clean the furniture using only an acidic rinse agent (such as Upholstery Rinse) or an acidic detergent (such as Natural Fiber Cleaner). This method will also remove the alkaline cleaning agent residues that caused the browning in the first place. Rapidly speed dry immediately afterward, and in most cases, the browning will be gone, or greatly reduced.
3. If step 2 does not work, apply an acidic neutralizing treatment, preferably one that does not contain any detergent or surfactant (such as Dye Stabilizer and Rinse). The reason not to use a product with a surfactant is that this eliminates the need to clean the fabric once more, or leave further residue. Repeated cleanings and accumulated residue will cause texture changes.
4. If step 3 does not work, apply a reducing agent, that again does not contain a surfactant (such as Coffee Stain Remover). This type of product requires time to work, and has a strong odor,and in this case may leave a powder residue than can be vacuumed away without causing distortion.
5. If step 3 doesn't work, you will need to rinse the fabric again, dry quickly, then use a non-chlorine oxidizing agent (such as Boost All) added to a neutral shampoo (such as Fabric Shampoo). This application will need to be followed by another acidic rinse application, and speed drying. This step may result in over whitening and additional texture distortion, and should be avoided whenever possible.
While your first goal should be to never allow browning to occur, if it does happen, your best choice is to attempt to remove the browning with steps 2 and 3, repeating those steps as needed and drying quickly. In this way you have the best chance of removing the browning, and also minimizing texture distortion and bleaching that cause additional damage.