How to Get Rid of a Smoky Smell From Your Home (and What Won’t Work)

Whether you live on the East Coast and are suffocated by wildfire smoke from Canada , or you foolishly let someone smoke a cigarette in your home, you are here because you want to know how to eliminate the smell. There are many tips that promise to get rid of the smell of smoke from your upholstery, carpet and nostrils, but many of them are temporary. Here’s what will really work, and what will only temporarily mask the smell.

These things provide temporary, incomplete odor removal (if they provide at all):

• Charcoal can absorb odors, according to Nok-Out , but it does little to eliminate odors at their source.
• It’s the same with baking soda, as it can temporarily remove a little odor from the air, but it won’t work forever. It can be more effective as a cleaner at the source, which we’ll talk about shortly.
• Coffee grounds are great for removing odors immediately, which is why candle shops have a jar of them for customers who want to browse the different scents. However, these are also temporary fixes.

If you want to temporarily mask the smell, especially if there is no permanent source of smoke, it may be helpful to keep containers of charcoal, baking soda, or coffee grounds on hand. However, if it is present or if the smell penetrates deep into your tissues, no quick remedy can permanently remove the stench.

How to Remove Smoke Smell Effectively

You need to deal with the source of the smell. Even when the smoke stops coming from wherever it comes from, it seeps into carpets, furniture, fabrics, drapes and everything else. According to the Texas A&M University Texas Continuing Disaster Education Network , you should clean all surfaces in your home. You can pick up products that can help you, but make sure you’re looking for deodorant products, not odor masking ones. (No air fresheners.)

Steam carpets and any other upholstery. You can try wiping the furniture and walls with white vinegar and dusting the furniture with baking soda before you steam or otherwise steam it as usual. This is where these hack products come in handy , but leaving them in bowls around the house isn’t going to be as much as actually rubbing them into affected materials.

According to Realtor.com , where getting smoke smells out of a home is a smart business move, you also need to ventilate the space. Don’t open a window if smoke and stench is coming from outside , but don’t be shy if it isn’t, or get an air purifier.

Don’t forget about your walls, which are porous enough to hold that stench in. Vinegar is fine, but the Red Cross recommends using trisodium phosphate and water, especially if you’re cleaning up the soot as well. TSP is also well suited for floors and other hard materials. (You can easily buy TSP from a major store or Amazon .) If the smell persists, consider repainting the walls and applying sealant to them.