His daughter had spilled paint on his mother in law’s lovely new carpet. Now we formulate paints to make them stick so removing paint from where it isn’t wanted can be a challenge.
Here is the best way to remove acrylic/water-based/latex paint from carpet.

1. Most important is to get onto it before it dries. Even if you have to add a little water, make sure the edges are not drying out but also try not to extend the stain’s perimeter.

2. Soak up as much as possible with paper towels.

3. Continue to dilute the leftover stain with water and keep soaking up the residue.

4. Get mild detergent (Sunlight or Palmolive) in luke warm water and give the area light abrasion. Keep soaking up those paper towels.

5. This should remove most of the paint. If there is any colour left where carpet fibres have been dyed you may want to try methylated spirits but please check another area of carpet first in case it removes the colour/pattern.

Ideally you should let the paper towels dry out before putting them in the household waste collection. Although water-based paint is fairly inert it does create a lot of visual pollution if it gets into any water. A little bit of wet paint can discolour a lot of water.

If the paint has already dried you can try putting ice on it and then peeling it off. Any residual staining should be dealt with using Methylated spirits as above. If all this fails you might have to try a professional carpet cleaner.

Luckily for my friend he was able to completely remove the paint and he remains on good terms with his mother in law. Phew.