Light coloured carpets make a room nice and cosy. Some people go for stark elegance in a room, so they choose a pristine white carpet to achieve this look. But no matter what kind of look you are trying to get into a room, you would not be successful if you end up having black marks between your carpet and the skirting boards of your room. These black marks under the skirting boards and on light-coloured carpet are just nasty.

What causes these black marks on carpets right under the skirting boards? The culprit that you are looking for is air. Air is everywhere; we all know that. And in houses, air under the flooring can escape through gaps and leave behind it a trail of dirt and dust. Thus, when black marks appear on the carpet directly under the boards, it means there are gaps on the flooring and the wall that is being used as an air vent.

The solution to this dilemma is clearly to fill the gaps that serve as the escape route for air. It is an easy enough solution and all the supplies that you need to buy are some flexible sealants, flexible tape, cedar paper and a carpet knife.

The first step to solving the problem is to pull back the carpet to expose the gaps. If you need to cut it with your carpet knife, go ahead and do it. Once you are done, just pull the carpet back. Afterwards, remove the layers of carpet underlay underneath the actual carpet, again to expose the gaps under the skirting boards.

Before you start working on sealing the gaps, clean first the area underneath the skirting boards so you would not have to deal with dirt trapped in your sealants. Sweep it, vacuum it, wipe it away, or just do anything you need to do in order to get the dirt out of there.

Once the gaps are clean and dry, apply the flexible sealant into the gaps. Let the sealant dry, and then slip the cedar paper into the space underneath the skirting boards. Tape the paper in place by using the flexible tape. In finishing this, you have just put a stopper on the escape route the dirty air is using.

This just leaves you to deal with the dirty stain on your carpet. Before you deal with that, you first replace all the carpet underlay that you removed prior to working on the gaps underneath the skirting boards. After you have replaced the carpet underlay, you may refit the carpet as you see fit. Then we get to the cleaning part. It is just collected dust, so all you need to do is to get a hardworking carpet cleaner to get the job done.

Light-coloured carpets are lovely in a room, but they can be nasty when there are black marks on the place where the carpet meets the skirting boards. Just stop the gap under the skirting boards, and your carpets will be fine.