Stain resistant or stain repellent finish

Chemistry not stated by the term

Coatings and finishes. Also written stain resistant, stain repellent, stain release, soil release, spill proof.

A surface treatment on fabric, carpet or upholstery that keeps oil and water based spills from bonding to the fibre.

Oil repellency is the part that matters. Water alone can be shed by silicone or by a wax, but a finish sold as resisting greasy stains is doing something that fluorochemicals do particularly well, which is why this phrasing is worth checking rather than accepting. The label almost never names the chemistry.

What the makers actually said

Of the 221 graded products whose materials record a stain resistant finish alongside a coating or finish, 100% name no coating chemistry anywhere in their published materials. This is a count of what companies published. It is not a statement about what any product contains.

Named a fluoropolymer
0
Named a coating that is not a fluorochemical
0
Named no chemistry at all
221

A further 2 products record a stain resistant finish with no coating or finish at all, so there is nothing for a maker to have disclosed. They are outside the split above.

Free to quote with a link. Of the 221 graded consumer products that record a stain resistant finish together with a coating or finish, not one of them names a coating chemistry anywhere in their published materials, according to PFAS Authority's October 2026 spec sheet decoder edition.

How those 223 products graded on our rubric

These are model-based estimates, not laboratory tests, scored on one public rubric. Read the spread against the categories underneath it rather than as a verdict on a stain resistant finish in the abstract, because the rubric gives every category a baseline and a term concentrated in one category will carry that category’s spread with it.

Median grade 30 out of 100, across 19 categories.

GradeProductsShare
Excellent10.4%
Good10.4%
Poor18482.5%
Bad3716.6%

Where a stain resistant finish turns up

The 6 categories holding the most of it, out of 19. Each one links to the live ranking for that category, best graded first.

Best graded with a stain resistant finish

One per category, best first, so the list is not five of the same thing.

Worst graded with a stain resistant finish

One per category, worst first. A low grade here is usually something else on the product, not the term.

Decode a whole listing instead

A product usually names several of these at once, and the one that matters is rarely the one in the title. Paste the full materials line into the decoder and it will pick out every term it recognises, the most open-ended first.

Other coatings and finishes

Edition 2026-10-08, read from 11,337 graded products carrying a material string, and frozen at that date. A term is matched against the material and construction string recorded for each product, written from its published materials, specification and ingredient list rather than from a laboratory test. Products count under every term they match, so the totals across terms overlap. Found something wrong? Tell us.