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I received this comment on my “Viscose Rugs are Garbage” post from a reader who was advised by her interior decorator to have a custom rug designed using “faux silk” (aka viscose or rayon or mercerized cotton):

“Unfortunately I had an area rug made that has large off-white parts made of faux silk, and the other part made of great wool. I did have a water spill on the faux silk part that left a horrible brown stain – as you’ve described. I read your Cleanfax article, got a recommendation through Cleanfax for a reputable cleaner in my area, and they took the rug to their facility to clean. They cleaned the stain pretty well, but all the off-white faux silk areas are now more of a beige color. Any help for these parts? A designer recommended that I use the faux silk when I had the rug made. I’ve showed her your article, and she says she has a hard time believing that it’s true! Any help is appreciated. – Terri”

First of all, I’m sure the designer was not intentionally misleading her client Terri into a poor rug purchase.  I find that most simply do not understand the “cons” of these fibers.

Before I post recommendations for the browning problem to Terri, I want to lay out the reasons why Art Silk, Faux Silk, Viscose Rugs, Rayon Rugs are simply poor choices in rugs that will be in areas with ANY foot traffic or any chance for spills (like Terri’s rug had happen).

1) Viscose/rayon fibers YELLOW with moisture and light exposure. This means a simple spill of water on the rug will create what looks like a pet urine spill instead. This is from cellulose browning (these are cotton byproducts, which tend to yellow/brown when wet).

Fading, matting, and yellowing over time.

2) Because these are incredibly weak fibers, these rugs shed easily, matte easily, and get a shaggier look over time as the nap of the fibers gets more and more distorted from walking on it, cleaning it, and just simply using it.

Sheds staple fibers. Looks as if a cat clawed at it.

3) Releases dyes easily, especially on its first cleaning, or if ever exposed to water from a flood.

And when you have a combination of “bad cleaning choices” – using high heat on a viscose rug, with the wrong highly alkaline cleaning solution (traffic lane cleaner), and too much agitation – you get a result like this:

Rayon rug ruined by carpet cleaner cleaned in the home.

This was cleaned in the owner’s home (by the way, woven rugs should always be taken to a rug cleaning plant to be properly washed, and not done in the home.)

You can see the extreme browning from the wrong cleaning solution and moisture used, the loss of dye from the heat and solution choice, and the distortion in the field from the tools used.

In Terri’s case, the faux silk (viscose) has turn “beige” rather than brown. The rug was taken to a rug plant to be cleaned properly, but these fibers inherently have this long list of problems, so avoiding no “issues” at all is very difficult.

Some possible tips to see if this beige look can be reversed would be this:

1) When a rug with viscose is cleaned, you can dry it out flat after extraction, and face down (fuzzy side down on a CLEAN surface), so that any browning/yellowing that occurs will wick toward the BACK of the rug rather than up to the front top tips. This will make the BACK of the rug more yellow over time, but that is better than the front.

If the rug is TUFTED instead of woven, you cannot dry the rug face down, there will not be enough air flow, so you need to dry the rug as quickly as possible. (I use an Airpath to make that happen.)

2) In this case, if we were only talking about one small area, here is a little home remedy I would recommend.

Mix in a bowl a 50/50 mix of household white vinegar, and cool water. Take a small brush (toothbrush will work) and brush on the tips of those beige fibers the mixture – just get them damp, not wet. Use a hair dryer on cool to dry – and see if there is any improvement in the area.

If it does look better – do the rest of it.

Vinegar (acetic acid 6%) helps counteract browning. This is why many rug cleaning operations do a vinegar rinse of rugs, to remove shampoo residue, and keep the fibers on the acid pH side, to help alleviate browning/yellowing and to also help stabilize rug acid dyes during the drying process.

In this case, where ALL of the faux silk areas have turned beige, a stronger acidic rinse is required to try to correct the browning. So if this was my rug I would contact the rug plant, and ask what the fee would be to simply give the rug an acidic rinse, and then dry it face down in their facility – to see if it improves.  Since it was recently cleaned – the cost should be supplies (the acidic rinse) and labor, but not as much as the full cleaning was.

This is a flaw based on the fiber choice. Silk is more expensive for a reason.

If the issue cannot be corrected, then I would recommend to Terri to look at requesting a refund on the rug itself, because if she was sold something that cannot be maintained and look the way it was sold to her – she should have been informed of that BEFORE she paid for it. If the designer did not give her a choice between the real stuff and the fake, then she was selling a job based on her own choice and not allowing Terri to make an educated buying decision.

If Terri saw the pros/cons of silk versus fake silk, and still chose to go the less expensive route…then this would just simply be the consequence of that. Knowing that it’s going to yellow/brown over time.

So that’s the question – was she provided complete information.

Designers choose viscose because it is inexpensive, and at least in the very beginning, it looks good too – but this will cost more in maintenance and corrective work and end up not being a “good deal” to their customers in the long run.

If any designers come across this post PLEASE…

…STOP selling faux silk rugs. Viscose and rayon are truly horrible choices for rugs.

- Lisa