One of the most frequent ways to ruin your lab coat is that beverage you’re always drinking: coffee stains. Coffee is unavoidable if you work in medicine, and if you’re human, spills will happen.
If you have a cheap lab coat or one that is made of cotton or other natural fibers, unfortunately you probably can’t do too much except throw that lab coat away. That’s because natural fibers tend to absorb liquids really quickly and cling to the colors that created the stain.
If you’ve made the (smart and practical) decision to get yourself a high-quality lab coat made of performance fabrics, there’s a high probability you will be able to get that stain out! As a matter of fact, if you take a look at the reviews for this brand of white lab coats, you’ll see a lot of people have had no problem rinsing out coffee stains because of the durable, technological fabrics they use.
Here are the steps you should take to save your lab coat from a coffee stain:
- Rinse the stain immediately. Literally, as soon as you can get to a faucet, rinse the stain. Don’t bother with trying to spot clean. It’s not going to work.
- Apply a stain remover to the brown patch. The designers at Medelita have recommended OxyClean, but the most important thing is to take action as soon as you can. The sooner you apply the stain remover, the better chances you can salvage your coat!
- Launder as normal with NO BLEACH. The stain should have been released during the wash, and if you have a lab coat made of performance fabric then the bleach will wear down the fibers.