In this short video, we’ll discuss why you should never let a carpet cleaner clean your area rugs in your home.
In just a couple of minutes, you’ll know more than most carpet cleaners do about the damage that can be done to area rugs by uninformed but well-meaning carpet cleaners.
Although area rugs may look a lot like carpet from the top, the two are actually very different in construction.
Carpeting is constructed with a backing that is plastic and is designed to be vacuumed from the top. Foundations in area rugs are made of tightly woven and wrapped fibers that trap the dirt. This means vacuuming alone won’t remove the soil.
With an area rug, the soil must be removed using special rug dusting equipment, and that can’t be done in the home.
Carpet cleaning equipment isn’t designed to clean the foundation of an area rug. It’s designed to clean the tips of the face yarns of wall-to-wall carpeting.
The real damage from dirt occurs deep in the foundation of area rugs. If an area rug is cleaned in the home, the dirt that is deep in the foundation of the rug simply isn’t removed, and any moisture that is added as part of the cleaning process mixes with the dirt and the cleaning agents and hardens into a plaster-like substance in the base of the rug.
This cuts the fibers and accelerates wear and can cause the foundation fibers to become brittle and crack, ruining the rug.
Once the deposits are left in the rug, they can’t often be completely removed, and even if they can, the only way to remove them is to use aggressive cleaning techniques with harsher chemicals.
Most commercial cleaning methods work sometimes, but some damage the fibers of the rug.
Proper area rug cleaning should include thorough dusting and immersion washing. Immersion washing is where the rug is actually submerged in a pool or a stream of water during the wash process.
This type of washing thoroughly removes all the dirt and safely rinses away all of the shampoo residues from the rug, and leaves the foundation and the face yarns clean and supple.
Carpet cleaning equipment can only clean the tips of the face yarns of an area rug.
In addition, the high heat from the hot water extraction method used in steam cleaning can damage the dyes in the rug and cause color bleeding. For this reason, wool area rugs should only be washed in cold water.
Dedicated rug cleaning facilities also have specialized equipment to safely and quickly get the rugs dry.
Because of the tightly-wrapped fibers of the foundation of the rug, which are often made of various levels of cotton, it’s easy for the outside fibers of the rug to become completely dry while the inside of the foundation is still really wet.
If the inner part of the rug isn’t dried quickly and thoroughly, it can lead to mold and mildew and other problems like browning and wicking.
As good as modern carpet cleaning equipment is, it can leave residue behind, especially in the tightly-woven foundation of the rug. This residue attracts soil and can cause your rug to become dirty very quickly.
Nothing can rinse the shampoos and detergents from a rug faster than immersion washing, which is another reason that true rug washing should be the only choice for cleaning your area rugs.
Finally, the proper cleaning chemistry is very different for wool than for nylon.
Most carpet is made of nylon, which is a type of plastic, and nylon fibers respond well and can be cleaned with fairly strong detergents, while wool is essentially hair and is much more delicate.
It’s like the hair on your head. If you washed your hair with something that was designed to clean plastic bathroom surfaces, it would dry out and become very brittle and damaged.
The same thing happens to your rugs when carpet cleaners use detergents that are designed for plastic carpet fibers on your delicate wool rug fibers.
Because of these facts, it’s important to never let your rugs be cleaned in your home with regular carpet cleaning equipment. It’s also important to have your rugs washed every two to three years.
If you have any questions about proper maintenance of your rugs, just give us a call and we’ll be happy to help you out.
