Spray bottle

In detail

A spray bottle looks like packaging and behaves like a control. What it decides is dose and placement, and both cause more problems than the choice of product does. The carpet institute recommends a mist-type sprayer explicitly to prevent overwetting during rinsing, because a soft surface saturated beyond what it can release retains moisture in its backing, dries slowly, and can develop odour or browning as it does. The same institute's per-stain procedures give the other half of the rule: apply the solution to the cloth rather than to the surface, and work from the outside of the mark inwards. Spraying directly onto a stain floods it, spreads it beyond its original edge, and drives it deeper — the opposite of every intention. On hard surfaces the equivalent failure is overspray. A spray aimed at a hob reaches the control panel, the display and the wall behind it; a mould spray aimed at grout lands on a bath mat and bleaches it; and a cleaner sprayed at a screen runs down into the bezel and reaches the electronics, which is why device manufacturers say to spray the cloth instead.

Why

• Spray bottle is explained by Penetration into fibres

  A mist rather than a stream, because the risk is not the chemistry but the volume reaching the backing.