The best way to remove red wine stains from anything

One way to treat a fresh red wine stain is to dilute it with white wine - but experts from Germany's Forum Waschen say water works just as well, and it is cheaper.

If your favourite shirt or tablecloth has been splashed with red wine you will need to leap into immediate action. Rinse the stain with tap water straight away. Then gently dry with a cloth, but be careful to just dab at the stain, otherwise you will rub the wine deeper into the fibres.

Dried-on stains

If the stain initially went unnoticed and has since dried, treating it will be more difficult. Often, the only thing that can help is bleach. Even though textiles can lose some of their intended colour as a result, it is worth a try, and far better than just throwing away the stained item.

You should check the fabric composition and the information on the resistance of the textile colours to bleaching agents. As a rule, white fabrics made of cotton, linen and synthetic fibres such as polyester are resistant to bleaching agents. However, you should be careful with wool, silk, mohair or leather.

In any case, it is worth paying particular attention to the textile care label, which provides information on which bleaching agent can be used in individual cases, if at all. When using bleaching agents, it is also important to pay attention to the information on the label of the stain remover or bleaching agent.

Exposure time

Generally speaking, Forum Waschen advises that you should only apply bleaching agent for about two minutes before rinsing the fabric with water. If the stain is still there, repeat the process. If you allow the bleaching agent to remain in contact with the fabric for too long, its true colour may be affected.

Sometimes the fabric hardens as a result of the bleaching. To prevent this, you should thoroughly rinse the bleaching agent or its breakdown products - which are soluble - with tap water, or remove them by running a wash cycle in the machine.

Of course, if you can get at the stain before it has dried out, so much the better.