How to Remove Stain from Marble

The marble before anything was done to it.

I’ve always heard its not possible to remove stains from marble, so we’ve always kind of steered away from having marble. Until recently. We received a beautiful antique marble table from a friend that needed some work. A couple legs were broken, and the marble was stained. We thought, hey if we can get this piece fixed up it will be gorgeous. So, Vince took on fixing the legs and I tried my luck at lifting the stains out of the marble. I read a couple different methods and tried several recommendations, so I’ll provide my feedback on each.

1.       Soap rag

I tried this first as it was the easiest and least invasive technique to try. I got some soapy water and soaked the rag in it. I then left the rag sit on the marble for 24 hours. Unfortunately, for this stain it didn’t make a difference. It cleaned the marble surface but did not remove the stains.

2.       Alcohol and soap mixture

I mixed alcohol and soap together and let this mixture sit on the marble stains overnight. Unfortunately, this method didn’t show much if any change either. Again, the surface was clean but the stain was still very present.

3.       Baking soda and water mixture

For this method you will want to mix the baking soda and water until it has a sour cream consistency. Then spread the mixture over all the stains. Once the stains are covered, use cling wrap to place over all the areas. Let this sit for 24 hours and wipe off.

The mixture wipes off easily, but you’ll want to take a clean towel to get any additional grit off. This method had the biggest impact on the stain. It looked a lot better. If there is more stain left, I would recommend doing this process again to get better results. Instead, we tried another method to see how it worked.

4.       Peroxide

There are a couple different options when it comes to creating a peroxide mixture. Since I wanted to get the biggest impact, I didn’t water it down or mix it. I used straight peroxide and dipped pieces of paper towels into the peroxide and laid the paper towel pieces on the marble stains. I checked on the stains periodically throughout the 24 hour time period. I wanted to make sure the peroxide didn’t lighten the marble or stain too much that it caused more discoloration.

Overall this worked well also. It did not remove the remaining stain completely, but it is pretty close.

My Thoughts

My recommendation for anyone looking to get a stain out of marble would be to try the baking soda mixture first. This seemed to lift the stain the most. I would repeat this process a couple times to get the desired results. If the baking soda mixture doesn’t seem as effective after a couple rounds and there is still some stain left, try the peroxide.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well these at home methods worked to lift the stain. My expectations were pretty low when I first started this process, but I must say I’m impressed. If you are willing to put a little bit of time and work into it, stained marble can be saved.

The finished proDuct. If you look closely you can see very sLight staining, but it looks 100x better than where it started.