January Artificial Grass Reset After Christmas and NYE

Resetting artificial grass after the holidays

The fortnight between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day is the hardest stretch of the year for most backyards. The esky lives on the lawn, kids tear around with new toys, someone lights sparklers at midnight, and the borrowed gazebo stays up for a week.

Artificial grass handles this better than a real lawn would, but it still picks up glitter, bottle caps, candle wax, spilled beer, flattened pile and the odd scorch mark.

A proper reset takes one morning and mostly needs a rake, a stiff broom, soapy water and the hose. This checklist runs in the order that saves the most effort. For the routine care that keeps turf looking good the other 50 weeks of the year, see our artificial turf maintenance guide.

Step	Job	Time for a typical backyard	Tools
1	Walk the lawn and pick up anything sharp or small	15 minutes	Bucket, gloves
2	Clear loose debris	15-30 minutes	Plastic rake or blower
3	Treat spills, wax and sticky spots	20-40 minutes	Soapy water, soft brush, ice
4	Check for heat damage	10 minutes	Your eyes and a torch
5	Rinse and deodorise	15 minutes	Hose, enzyme cleaner
6	Brush up flattened areas	30-60 minutes	Stiff synthetic broom
7	Check infill, seams and edges	15 minutes	Broom, bag of kiln-dried sand

Step one: a slow walk before any tools come out

Do this before the blower comes out. After a party the lawn hides things a rake will miss or scatter: bottle caps, ring pulls, toothpicks, cracker toy parts, broken glass, cigarette butts and stray tent pegs.

Walk the lawn in strips a metre or so apart, and run a gloved hand across the pile where people stood around the drinks table or the barbecue. Small sharp items settle into the infill, and they are the ones that end up in a child's foot or a dog's paw in February. If you had a real Christmas tree, check the path it took to the bin for needles.

Step two: clear the loose debris

Once the hazards are out, rake or blow off the rest: party poppers, streamers, confetti, leaves and the general grit that a crowd tracks in. Use a plastic leaf rake, never a metal one, since steel tines snag fibres and can drag seams apart.

Glitter and fine confetti are the annoying exception. They are light enough to drift through a blower's airstream and sit back down in the pile, so a slightly damp stiff broom, worked in short strokes towards a corner, gathers them better. Sweep them into a dustpan and bin them rather than hosing them into the garden bed or the stormwater, since most glitter is plastic and does not break down.

Step three: spills, wax and sticky patches

Christmas spills are mostly sugary (soft drink, punch, wine, pavlova, melted ice cream), and ants will find a sticky patch within a day or two in January heat. For almost all of them, warm water with a squirt of dishwashing liquid and a soft brush is enough. Work it in, then rinse well so no residue stays in the pile to attract dirt.

A few holiday stains need a different approach:

• Candle and citronella wax: let it harden fully (an ice cube or a bag of ice speeds this up), then crumble it off by hand and brush out the flakes. Never use a hair dryer or an iron to melt it off, since heat that softens wax can also soften the turf.
• Barbecue fat and marinade drips: blot up as much as you can with paper towel, then work in soapy water and rinse. Grease takes two or three goes.
• Chewing gum and lollies: freeze with ice until brittle, then peel or crack them off.

Skip the solvents. Acetone, turps, paint thinners and citrus degreasers can soften or discolour the fibres and break down the backing coating and seam adhesive, so they can leave a worse mark than the stain you started with.

Step four: check for heat damage

This step tells you whether the reset is a clean-up or a repair. Look for fibres that are shiny, fused, stiff or blackened, especially wherever these were:

• The barbecue, pizza oven, fire pit or chiminea.
• Sparklers. In Queensland, for example, sparklers, bonbons and streamer cones are classed as unrestricted fireworks while other fireworks are illegal without a licence, which is why sparklers turn up at so many backyard NYE parties. A spent sparkler wire stays hot enough to melt turf if it is dropped or stood upright in the lawn. Rules differ by state, so check yours.
• Cigarettes, and anything reflective (a mirror or mirrored sign) that could have thrown afternoon sun across the lawn.

Small melted spots can be patched. Cut the damaged section out with a sharp utility knife, cut a matching piece from an offcut, line up the pile direction, and fix it in with joining tape and adhesive underneath. If you are not sure whether a mark is heat damage or something else, our guide to why artificial grass melts walks through the usual causes.

Step five: rinse, cool and deodorise

A good hose-down flushes the last soapy water and dust out of the pile, cools the surface and starts on the smells a crowd and a hot week leave behind.

If visiting dogs came along, the favourite toilet spots will need more than water. An enzyme cleaner breaks down the odour compounds in urine, where perfumed products only mask them. Our guide to removing dog urine smell from artificial grass sets out the method step by step, and turf for pets covers the setup side.

January is also peak surface heat. On a hot day in full sun, synthetic turf gets much hotter than living grass, hot enough to be painful for bare feet and paws. Rinse it before the kids run out and read whether artificial grass can burn bare feet if you have young children.

Step six: bring the flattened pile back up

Every party leaves a map on the lawn: a flat ring under the outdoor setting, a track from the back door to the esky, dents from the gazebo legs and a flat rectangle where the paddling pool sat.

Brush against the direction the fibres are lying with a stiff synthetic-bristle broom, working dents from a few directions, then give them a day or two in the sun to recover. For a big lawn, a hired power broom saves a lot of hand-brushing.

How much comes back depends on the turf. Longer, softer pile looks lush but flattens more readily, while a shorter, denser pile springs back faster after heavy traffic. The pile height guide covers that trade-off in detail, and it is worth knowing before you plan next Christmas.

Step seven: infill, seams and edges

Heavy traffic and hosing move sand infill around. If fibres look longer than usual, the turf feels spongy or a spot flattens again within days of brushing, it is due for a top-up of kiln-dried sand, spread on a dry day and brushed in against the pile.

Then check seams and edges where furniture was dragged or a gazebo was pegged, since a lifted join is easier to fix now than after summer storms. Pull any weeds along the borders.

When a reset is not enough

Sometimes January shows up a bigger problem: a large burnt area, a worn-through section, or old budget turf that has given up. Then patching becomes a partial or full replacement.

Our turf ships in fixed cut lengths (commonly 5m, 10m, 15m or a full 20m roll, depending on the product) at a 3.71m roll width. You pick the length that covers the area, and for wider spaces you join rolls side by side. A length shorter than a full roll carries a cutting fee, and we supply the turf only, so installation is a job for you or your landscaper. We do not ship to Western Australia or South Australia. Each product page has an instant calculator for length and quantity, so you can see current pricing straight away. Compare the range, from budget to heavier-duty premium turf, on the products page.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a January turf reset take?

For a typical suburban backyard, most people get through the whole checklist in two to three hours. The spill and stain step takes longest if the party was a big one. Leave the flattened areas a day or two after brushing before you judge how well they have recovered.

Can I pressure wash artificial grass after a party?

You can, with a wide fan nozzle, moderate pressure and the wand held well off the surface at an angle. Keep it away from seams and edges, and expect it to move some infill, so brush and check sand levels afterwards. For most post-party cleaning, a garden hose with soapy water is enough.

Are sparklers safe to use on artificial grass?

Hold them over paving or a bucket of sand, never over the lawn. The spent wire stays very hot for a while after the sparkler goes out and will melt synthetic fibres on contact. Drop used sparklers straight into a bucket of water.

Should I put a gazebo or marquee on artificial grass?

It is fine for a few days if you use the weights or sandbags that come with it rather than driving pegs through the turf backing and seams. Expect some flattening under the legs, which a stiff broom fixes. Move it off the lawn once the party is over, since weeks in one spot leaves dents that take longer to recover.