How to Remove Cigarette Smoke Odor in a Home

LESLIE: Joyce in Rhode Island, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?

JOYCE: Have an in-law apartment and someone who was living there for a while was smoking. And we wanted to do whatever we could to get the smell of the smoke out of the apartment.

TOM: Do you have wall-to-wall carpet in there?

JOYCE: There is.

TOM: Yeah, that’s going to be a bit of a problem because I’m sure the odor is into that carpet. 

So, a couple things you could do. First of all, if you’re going to paint the apartment, you’re going to want to prime all the walls first. Well, first of all, wash them down, then prime them with a good-quality primer, then paint them. That will help seal in what’s gotten into the walls.

As far as the carpet, a good, thorough, deep steam-cleaning of that. You may have to go over it a number of times to try to get as much dirt and debris and odor out of that carpet as possible. I mean the best thing – if we have situations where this is a real problem, the carpet’s kind of worn, we’ll tell people to take it up and prime the subfloor underneath, believe it or not, to make sure we really seal out any of those odors that have soaked into the wood. But if you prime and paint the walls and if you steam-clean the carpet, that’s probably the best you can do.
What about furniture? Is this place furnished? Do you still have the old furniture in there that the smoker lived with?

JOYCE: The only furniture that’s really in there is a leather living-room set.

TOM: Leslie, what do you think about that? Will the smoke odor get into the – go through the leather and get into the cushions?

LESLIE: You know, leather is such a natural surface that it is porous in its own right and it depends on what the cushioning is on the inside. You really have to be careful and of course, you can’t really thoroughly clean leather because of its inherent natural qualities. You don’t want it to stain. You might want to see what those cushions are like on the inside. Take out the inserts. If you can replace those, that could be a huge help.

JOYCE: OK, great. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

TOM: You’re welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.