As many homeowners know, hardwood floors and sneaky dogs don’t always mix. Whether you have a cute puppy who is just learning how to be house trained or an older dog that simply forgets where to “go”, there’s almost always a point when you’ll have little liquid accidents on your hardwood floors.

The black urine stain left by our little dog. The stain is totally dry.

When caught quickly, most pet urine can be wiped up with a minimum of damage because wood floors are usually sealed against liquid spills. But as most dog owners can attest, you don’t always find these little accidents when they happen.

We have hardwood floors in our home and we have throw rugs strategically placed around our home to add some warmth and color to most of our rooms. Our little Papillon found one of these rugs to be just a little too comfortable to resist and thought it would make a great substitute for going outside (especially when it was raining!)

We were doing some spring cleaning and we picked up a throw rug and we were shocked to find not only a dark stain on the bottom of the rug, but also a dark, almost black, urine stain on the hardwood floor beneath. Because our little furry friend had been using the same spot on the rug for a while, the dampness and acid in the urine had left a dark black stain.

Hydrogen peroxide drop test. The light round area is where I tested a drop of hydrogen peroxide and allowed it to dry overnight.

After uttering a few obscenities we were faced with the problem of what to do with this black stained wood. I scraped at it with my fingernail, but the stain went deep and it certainly didn’t smell very appealing.

I search around the internet and found lots of possible solutions. There are literally hundreds of different expensive products you can buy that claim to remove pet and dog urine stains from hardwood. If you don’t want to use one of these cleaners some sites suggest trying to sand away some of the stain if it isn’t very deep. Some hardwood flooring websites even recommend ripping out the boards of from the floor and completely replacing them. I’m pretty handy, but replacing hard wood floors is not high on my list of home improvement projects I want to try anytime soon.

But then I stumbled upon another much cheaper and easier solution. Instead of “removing” the stain I could mask the stain by making it lighter in color. But I couldn’t use a harsh whitener like bleach on my hardwood floors. Bleach is typically too strong for wood and just turns it gray and colorless in most cases. However, there is a way to lighten things with a simply household chemical that typically costs less than $1.00 a bottle: hydrogen peroxide!

Yep, simple hydrogen peroxide and a little restraint. If you’re going to use this method I strongly suggest you take it slowly because too much hydrogen peroxide can harm your floors just as much as bleach or dog urine.

The “lightened” floor with no pee stain! It even looks much better in person than it does in the photo!

Here’s what I did: I sat down next to the stain with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and decided to try a little bit at a time. I stuck my finger in the bottle and then simply tapped my soaked finger on the black stain on the floor, leaving a small puddle on it. I did not pour on the hydrogen peroxide or paint it on. I just put on a few drops from my finger and let it dry over night.

Sure enough, the next day the spot was much lighter where I had left the hydrogen peroxide drops. The next night I did the same thing with a little more of the stain and by the third and forth night I had covered the last little bit of the stain and by the next morning the entire spot was lighten to the point where it matched the color and grain of the wood all around it! Now remember: this is great for wood floors that are light in color. Lightening a stain with hydrogen peroxide will only work if you want your dark stain to be lighter in color. If you have dark wood floors you probably don’t want to do this because the light spot might actually stand out more than the stain.

When I did this on my light colored floors the wood still had plenty of color, it still still matched the surrounding area, and it was fairly odor free. Success!

To be sure, I did end up using a commercial product to remove the odor from the rug. I also used this product on the hardwood floor to help alleviate the remaining odor once the black stain was removed. It’s called KIDS ‘N’ PETS Brand Stain & Odor Remover and it is relatively inexpensive and gets great reviews. I didn’t have much luck with it removing the stain from the hardwood floor (yes, I tried) but it definitely took care of the odor in both the rug and on the floor after two uses. If you still have the odor then there is this instant ebook you can buy which has a money-back guarantee and offers a way to make your own cat urine and odor remover at home.

So there you have it! With a 94 cent bottle of hydrogen peroxide I was able to remove a nasty black dog urine stain from my hardwood floors and save myself hundreds of dollars worth of floor repair costs!

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