How to Remove Cigarette Odor from a Home

Find out how to get rid of cigarette odor in a home. Get tips on pulling up the carpets and padding, cleaning everything with TSP and using a good-quality, oil-based primer to seal in the odor.

LESLIE: Dot in Wisconsin needs some help with odor removal from a home. Tell us what’s going on.

DOT: I’d like to know how to get rid of cigarette- and cigar-smoke odor?

TOM: Well, it really depends on some of the other materials in the house. So, for example, if you’ve got carpets, it’s very hard to get the odor out because, Dot, you could do a great job cleaning every other square foot of that house but the odor will stay in the carpets.

Generally, if we have a situation where, perhaps, you had a smoker in the house and there was a move-out situation, we tell people to, first off, get rid of the carpets, get rid of the padding, then clean everything very thoroughly using TSP – trisodium phosphate. So this is walls and floors. And then prime everything using a good-quality, oil-based primer like KILZ. Because the primer will seal in any odors that still remain in the building materials: for example, inside of a, say, a plywood subfloor. Once you do all that, then you can essentially redecorate – repaint, new flooring and so on – and you shouldn’t have a problem with the odor.

DOT: Thank you. By chance, would you know if [farm and feed] (ph) stores would carry that?

TOM: Yep, I think so. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.