Life is full of smells. Sometimes they’re pleasant and euphoric – other times, not so much. Perhaps one of the most common unpleasant and offensive odors is the smell of stale smoke, especially if you’re a non-smoker.
Whether you’re kicking the habit once and for all, or you’ve just moved into a home previously occupied by smokers, getting rid of the smoke smell is important in maintaining a fresh and pleasant environment. This article will go over a few ways to get rid of that pesky smell.
Clearing the Air
When you have a foul odor in your space, your first inclination is probably to clear the air. There are a few ways you can reduce the smoke smell in the air, from ventilation to filtration.
Bring in Fresh Air
One of the most effortless ways to help tame smoke smells is to open a window. This won’t banish the smell or rid the odors at their source, but it can help dilute the offending smell to a manageable level. If you’re a current smoker, providing adequate ventilation will also help cut down on future tar buildup.
Use Air Fresheners and Odor Neutralizers
Another way to help tame lingering smoke odors is by using air fresheners and odor neutralizers. Air fresheners will help mask the odor, while odor neutralizers attack the odors at their source. Both come in various forms to help tackle odors in the air, on furniture, and across other surfaces.
Sprays
Odor neutralizers that are found in a spray bottle allow you to spray objects directly. Odor neutralizers like Febreze trap odor-causing compounds to stop them from emitting odors, while others like OdoBan work to disinfect odor-causing bacteria.
Febreze and similar odor neutralizers work best on fabrics that are hard to clean, while neutralizers like OdoBan work on both soft and hard surfaces.
Aerosols
While spray solutions work best for surfaces, aerosols are great at clearing the air. Many air fresheners are available as aerosols, but some odor neutralizers made specifically for smoke are also available in aerosol form. Products like Ozium Air Sanitizer and Zep Smoke Odor Eliminator are a couple of examples, and they are great at getting rid of stale smoke smells in the air.
Passive Products
Passive air fresheners and odor eliminators can work well in combination with other types to keep smoke odors at bay long after you’ve used a spray or aerosol. These include natural solutions like baking soda, vinegar, and activated charcoal.
You can place any of these in open bowls around the space you’re trying to freshen, and they’ll work over time to absorb the smoke smell. Vinegar has a particularly strong scent, so you can mix it with a bit of lavender oil to help cut through the eye-watering stench it emits.
You can also find gels, like Ozium’s Smoke and Odors Eliminator gel, that slowly evaporate into the air and provide a clean scent while also attacking malodorous compounds that continue to linger. These work especially well in small spaces like vehicles or small rooms.
Use Air Purifiers
Another great way to purify the air and rid it of smoke smells is by using an air purifier. These have a distinct advantage over odor neutralizers and air fresheners in that they continuously work to not only freshen the air, but to also pull harmful and odor-causing compounds from the air. They’re also easy to use, and provide a safe, non-toxic way to clean the air in your space.
If you’re a current or ex-smoker looking for a reprieve from lingering smoke smells, a HEPA air purifier with an activated carbon filter can work wonders to tame smoke odors and keep the air clean.
Remove the Source of the Smell
If you’re a smoker, or live with a smoker, then you know that no amount of cleaning and freshening alone will completely rid your space of that rancid smell. Even after the smoke has cleared, the smell will continue to linger. In order to truly get rid of smoke smells, you need to eliminate them at the source.
Clean up Smoking Paraphernalia
If you’re a smoker looking to get your home smelling fresh again, then this tip is for you. Ashtrays, pipes – anything you use for smoking all have to go.
If you’re hesitant about parting with these belongings, and you don’t have a suitable place to store them outside your home, then thoroughly cleaning them with dish soap and isopropyl alcohol should help banish the foul odors they can emit.
Clean Everything in Your Home or Vehicle
The next step in ridding your space of smoke smell is to clean everything thoroughly. That means washing, wiping, and sometimes scrubbing.
Hard Surfaces
You’ll want to clean any hard surface that smoke has come in contact with. That means walls, ceilings, desks, tables – everything.
A simple solution of one part vinegar to one part water should suffice for most hard surfaces. However, you may opt to add a bit of ammonia to the mix for ceilings and walls, especially if you have years of tar buildup to contend with.
When cleaning walls and ceilings, vigorous scrubbing is often essential. Using a textured washcloth can also help by adding some necessary abrasion without damaging the painted surface.
Soft Surfaces
Since they’re more porous and harder to clean, soft surfaces are often more prone to buildup than hard surfaces. If your space has a lingering smoke smell, you’ll want to launder any drapery and clothing you have with vinegar, to remove any tar and other smoke residue that could be lingering deep in the fabric.
For furniture and carpet, you may need to bust out the carpet and upholstery cleaner, especially if Febreze just isn’t cutting it. Pre-treating your carpets and furniture with a vinegar-water solution will also help your efforts go the extra mile in removing odor-causing buildup.
Replace Your HVAC Filter
Another place where smoke odors can linger and wreak havoc on your entire home is in your HVAC system. While it’s impractical and expensive to clean the entirety of your HVAC system, you can replace your HVAC filter, which may house much of the malodorous smoke smell permeating your home’s air.
When replacing the filter, you’ll want to ensure that the replacement is the correct size. If your existing filter doesn’t have a size listed, quickly measure the filter to get the proper dimensions. You can also find washable furnace filters that are cut to fit.
If changing your furnace filter isn’t enough, you may consider equipping your vents with filters as well. Like furnace filters, you can find these in both pre-sized and cut to fit varieties, and they’ll filter the air passing through your home’s ducts.
Home Renovations
Sometimes the best solution to a persistent problem is to start fresh. Whether top-to-bottom cleaning isn’t enough, or you just don’t want to go through the trouble, there are some more serious steps you can take to reclaim your home’s fresh scent.
Repainting Your Walls
If your walls have years of tar buildup from smoking, you might just consider giving your walls a fresh coat of paint. This is an ideal solution if you’re rethinking your home’s interior design, or you just want to avoid hours of laborious scrubbing.
When repainting, you’ll want to add a coating of odor-sealing primer. Not only will it help the new paint properly seal and require fewer layers of paint, but it will also keep the odors you’re sealing from resurfacing.
Replacing Carpet
Along with your furniture, your carpets harbor smoke residue. While it is often sufficient to clean your carpets with a carpet cleaning machine, years of buildup may require you to outright replace the carpet to rid your home of the lingering smell.
Heed Caution With Ozone Generators
When you think of ozone, you probably think of the atmospheric ozone that keeps us safe from harmful UV radiation. Many also tout ozone as a magical cleanser that permeates even the smallest nooks and crannies to banish maleficent molecules.
While it’s true that the ozone created by ozone generators can neutralize some odor-causing compounds, it’s often exacerbated by marketers and manufacturers looking to close a sale. The truth is, ozone is incapable of ridding smells from many volatile organic compounds, which is where many of the foul smells you encounter in your home come from.
The EPA also classifies ozone as an environmental air pollutant. It’s both bad for the environment, and extremely toxic for your health in concentrations high enough to have a noticeable effect on odor-causing compounds it does react with. It can also react with certain chemicals to create hazardous chemicals like formaldehyde.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that ozone generators are wholly ineffective at controlling smoke odors. In fact, the EPA found in a 1995 study that ozone may react with acrolein, which is one of many odorous chemicals found in cigarette smoke.
Nevertheless, if you decide that using an ozone generator is an option for you, consider hiring a professional. While it is cheaper to do it yourself, you could put yourself and your family at serious risk if you don’t take the proper precautions.
Smoke Smells, up in Smoke
If you’ve set your heart on clearing your living space of smoke smells, or you just need to clear the place out after an indulgent weekend, then these are the quick-fix and long-term methods to get it done. Depending on how much you smoke, it’s not hard to get rid of even the toughest smells, even if doing so might take a bit of time.
Keeping your space free from rancid smoke odors can help prolong the value of your belongings and maintain your sanity. With the right knowledge and some persistence, you can clear lingering smoke smells from any space, giving you a breath of fresh air.