How to Get Lube Out of Sheets

At ASTROGLIDE, our products are designed to empower your playful, passionate self in the bedroom, and we know that playful and passionate isn't always neat and tidy. It's wild, fun, and a little bit messy. We've all woken up from a steamy evening to discover our sheets bearing the telltale signs of the previous evening's fun. While we love to hang on to the memories of our intimate escapades, we prefer they live on in our fantasies and not on our sheets. So, what do you do if you wake up to lube stains?

How do you get lube out of your sheets?

To answer that question, we went straight to our Research & Innovation lab to talk to our chemists, who love a good challenge. They got to work choosing different products to test with a variety of cleaning methods.

The Lubes

We chose six different products to test for stain removal that have different bases and ingredients. In general, water-based products are much easier to clean up than silicone or oil-based products. We chose the following:

The Cleaning Products

We tested the following common cleaning products that are widely available at grocery stores, mass retailers, and online: Dawn Powerwash Dish Spray Shout Triple-Acting Spray OxiClean Powder OxiClean Spray Tide Rescue Spray Dr. Bronner's Liquid Soap Cornstarch Baking Soda Spray 'n Wash Borax Tide To Go Pen Shout Wipes

The Method

We cut out fourteen squares from a bed sheet for each cleaning product and drew a Sharpie grid on each sheet. Each square had six sections, and we applied each of the six lubricants we were testing. We applied 3 ml of each lubricant, which is what we determined to be the average amount used or "dosage". We let the lube soak in and sit for approximately an hour. We then applied the cleaning product and let it sit for several hours before laundering. We machine-washed sheets on a normal wash cycle at a warm temperature and then dried them on a normal cycle in the dryer.

Astroglide lubricant on sheets, showing how it can stain.

The Results

Best Cleaning Method for Water-Based Products & Silicone Liquid

Three of the cleaning sprays came out as winners. Just apply liberally and launder on a normal cycle. Dawn Powerwash OxiClean Spray Shout Triple-Acting Spray

Best Cleaning Method for Oil-Based Products & Silicone Gel

X Gel, which contains coconut oil, and O Oil, which is completely oil-based, were more difficult to remove. The best method we found is to apply some baking soda to the stain, spreading it across the entire spill. Let that sit for at least twenty minutes up to overnight, then use one of the sprays recommended above before laundering. If you have a strong affinity for silicone or oil-based products, to be extra safe, you may want to lay down a towel because the stain might not come out completely, depending on your sheets and the amount of product that was left behind. Have your own tips for cleaning up after a night of fun? Share with us on Twitter!