My last post showed a rug that was damaged by not being attentive with a piece of dusting equipment on a Turkish rug.

The technician had not been careful with a heavy piece of equipment, and paid the price.

He was not trained by his instructors on how to keep from letting that happen when you are not paying attention to what you are doing. (See in the comments of that thread how to use Tyvek to protect from that damage.)

In the same week I was sent a photo of this nice wool rug that a professional cleaner bled.

Front side - red dyes have bled.

Back side - red dyes have bled.

Now…if there is ONE thing I’d like you to take away from this post, it is this:

HIGH HEAT IS BAD FOR WOOL RUGS!

(It’s also bad for silk, FYI.)

Think about your clothing for a minute…how many items do you wash in HOT water, and put in a HOT dryer?

Some, I know… but most, no.

Why?

Because many of the fibers – especially NATURAL fibers – have a problem with that. Loss of color, shrinking, loss of finishing and texture.

When was the last time you took your nice wool sweater and washed it in HOT water, and dried it on HIGH heat?

Now, wool rugs are different from wool fabrics in construction – but many of the characteristics, and risks, are the same.

And with this rug, the cleaner had two runners to clean. He used an approved WoolSafe shampoo, dye stabilizing solution, wash pit set-up, and truck mount with a water claw as well.

First rug – no problem.

Second rug, as the heat kicked in on his truck mount (he had set it low to begin with, and it increased over time)… suddenly a problem. The dyes bled. Despite the dye stabilizing solution.

He was working under two false assumptions here:

1) That dye stabilizing solutions “set” dyes indefinitely. They don’t. They give you a window of opportunity to clean, and if you have a rug with dyes that are not colorfast, that window is VERY small. You gotta wash it quick.

2) That HEAT is okay for wool. For oriental rugs, it is not. One of the reasons I test a rug’s dye strength with a HOT water test is because I want to know IMMEDIATELY if there is any chance at all a rug will bleed on me. I wash with cold, but I test with hot – to be safe. Sometimes rugs can bleed right away…sometimes it takes some time, so you need to know what you are working with, and use the right solutions to strengthen the dye-fiber bond during your thorough wash process.

Now…this professional cleaner was told by one of his instructors that wool is okay at up to 140 degrees of heat, so he was not worried…until it bled that is.

This was an IICRC-instructor who told him this. An instructor who is not a rug cleaner, but apparently gives some advice on rugs. I’m not sure why.

But, you see, with wool wall-to-wall installed carpeting, using heat to clean is commonplace. But generally you will not find in a home, installed wool carpeting with bright reds, blues, and other vivid acid dyes as you will with oriental rugs, or specialty fine fabrics.

In the latest cover story of Cleanfax Magazine, I mention several things that this post is focusing on: 1) the shortcomings in today’s training in the fields of rug cleaning and upholstery cleaning, and 2) that I believe someone well-trained in upholstery and fine fabric care would be a BETTER oriental rug cleaner than someone well-trained in residential carpet cleaning.

Here’s the article, which I co-authored with Jim Pemberton (an expert in upholstery and fine fabric care):

Cleanfax – Sept 2010 Cover

Homes with nice investment-grade textiles on their floors, almost always also have investment-grade fabric on their furnishings. They go hand in hand.

And with fine furnishings, or oriental rugs, there needs to be an EXCELLENT eye and hand for testing and inspection. Fiber tests, dye tests, construction identification, and inspecting for any pre-existing conditions that might hamper your cleaning results…or lead to a cleaning disaster. You need to be able to spot these BEFORE they become problems.

Something shared with a client before cleaning is EDUCATION, and after cleaning is an EXCUSE.

The more time you put into the front end with your attention to detail, the less you will spend on the back end trying to clean up a mess, or pay for one.

There is a serious shortcoming in our training today, at least in these specialty niches of oriental rugs and fine fabrics.

My hope is that making a post like my previous one (showing how a Rug Badger could damage a rug if you are NOT careful), and this one (showing how a mistaken belief about heat not being bad, and dye stabilizer being a “fix”), will help keep anyone in the rug cleaning world to be just a little bit more attentive to what they are doing.

This might be a 1 in 100 chance of happening to a rug cleaner…but I can tell you…being that one that it does happen to, really sucks.

Just ask the guys who handled these recent rug disasters.

Hope you enjoy the article!

- Lisa

Now…tufted rugs are of course not new to retail shops. I’m sure you’ve seen them, rugs with a material backing, like this:

Tufted rug - cloth backing.

Tufted rugs are what I refer to as FAKE rugs, because they are a cheaper, quicker way to create the look of a woven rug without the quality and longevity of a real woven rug.

Tufted rugs are essentially hooked rugs, looped into a cotton mesh, then latex is poured over the back to glue the fibers in place. They most of the time cover the back with a cloth, because the latex is ugly and can sometimes crumble or yellow the floor/carpeting underneath it. Then they shear off the top loops so it is straight fibers like a “real” rug.

Tufted rugs by and large are cheaply made, and have a life of several years, versus decades (or centuries) like quality hand woven wool rugs.

A real hand woven rug can take months - or years - to craft.

I am a fan of real rugs – WOVEN rugs. Especially wool rugs.

That said, most consumers do not know the difference, and many buy tufted rugs, so you need to know how to clean them.

Because tufted rugs have a lot of corners cut to allow them to sell for cheaper prices, you have a number of concerns:

1) The latex, if poor quality, can crumble and the face fibers can pull loose during vacuuming or cleaning.

2) The designs, if stenciling is used that is INK, can bleed out when wet and wick up to the top (this is a manufacturing flaw, because they should NOT be using ink to do this).

3) The latex, if it has gone bad and soured, can create a HORRIBLE odor (smells like a cross between dirty socks and rubber) that will get WORSE with any moisture from cleaning. If the rug is new, and smells, tell your client to RETURN the rug immediately to exchange for another one or to get their money back. This is flawed merchandise.

4) Because of the latex construction, these rugs can take up to 4 times as long to dry as woven rugs do. So you need to boost air movement and dehumification to boost your drying results for tufted rugs.

There are some other issues, but those are the biggies.

And I don’t want to imply ALL tufted rugs are crummy. There are some high-end, very nice tufted rugs, for example Edward Field’s rugs are VERY expensive wool tufted rugs that are high quality.

Back to my story… I was sent a photo of a TUFTED rug with wool face fibers, but also SILK highlights throughout it. And the cleaner wanted to know any tips or concerns he should have. Here’s two photos of the rug in question:

Wool and silk tufted rug - front view

Wool and silk tufted rug - back corner

Now, considering this is a tufted rug, the odds of the highlights being good quality silk are not high. In fact, it is likely rayon or viscose or mercerized cotton (all used as artificial silk).

To determine if it is real silk versus fake silk, you take a tuft from the rug (use tweezers) and drop it in a small cup of fresh Chlorox bleach.

If it is real silk, it will begin to bubble and slowly dissolve.

If it is fake silk (mercerized cotton, or rayon/viscose which is cotton by-products), it will do nothing. By the way, rayon/viscose is the WORST fiber on the planet for rugs.

There are many high quality rugs from Persia, and China, that are hand woven wool oriental rugs with silk highlights around the floral designs. They are beautiful.

Silk is a natural protein fiber, like wool, and in these cases where the amount of silk is not large, you can follow the same guidelines you do for cleaning wool and safely clean the silk as well. Same shampoo, same dye stabilizing solutions, same vinegar rinse to remove the residue.

One difference is that the silk will get matted and stiff when fully dried, and this requires some grooming to loosen those fibers up again. Very slow hand brushing is required (similar to the grooming needed for velvet when it is cleaned, except you use a hand brush instead of a carding brush). This additional time needed is why it usually costs more to clean silk rugs than wool rugs, because more time is required. (By the way, grooming is required for FAKE silk also, so even cheap viscose rugs cost more to clean than wool rugs because it takes more time.)

With this tufted rug in particular, because these rugs are made quickly and not with the highest quality ingredients, I would pre-inspect for a few things. I would want to know: are the dyes colorfast? are the fibers strong or do they pull away easily? is there any stenciling? is the silk actually RAYON? is there any latex strong odor?

I would test the dyes. If they test colorfast, and the rug is fairly soiled, then I would wash the rug. Give it a bath.

If the dyes test as fugitive, then I would surface clean the rug with an upholstery tool section by section carefully, to clean it. I would use an Airpath air mover to speed dry.

I would test the fiber strength. If they test strong, and the rug is fairly soiled, then I would wash the rug.

If they test weak (easily pull away from the rug), then I would surface clean it with the upholstery tool, and if needed, place a screen over the rug sections as I clean them to keep fibers from being pulled away during extraction strokes.

I would inspect for stenciling. If I see none when I grin open the fibers to look, then I would wash the rug.

If I do see stenciling, and the rug is fairly soiled, I would STILL wash it… because the rug is dark and so ink bleeding out will not be visible on the front, but I would let the client know ink marks will show on the backing material. (Most clients don’t care what the back of the rug looks like, and I always prefer to give rugs a bath versus surface cleaning because it is the difference between taking a real bath or having a sponge bath.) Just in case the ink might bleed into the white silk highlights, I would use an Airpath to speed dry it.

I would test to see if the highlight fibers are RAYON instead of silk. If they are in fact rayon, then I know I need to be careful about scrubbing the rug, and to be extra careful when grooming after it’s dry. Rayon is a very weak fiber, and will break apart with even the gentlest cleaning.

I would pre-inspect for the horrible odor found in some tufted rugs. If the rug has that odor I would NOT CLEAN IT. This is a manufacturing flaw, tell the client to return it to the store they bought it at.

As long as you are VERY good at pre-inspection, and VERY good at carefully cleaning a rug, this should not be a problem rug to clean.

If you have any questions for me on this rug or others, please post them in the COMMENTS.

Thank you for reading the Rug Chick blog, I am always happy to see so many come to visit me here.

- Lisa

With an inexpensive tufted rug, this can be a blessing because it is protecting a much more valuable wood floor underneath it.

With an oriental rug (hand woven), this can be a curse because pet urine on a rug is one of the most dangerous spills on a textile – not only for the rug itself, but for the occupants if you allow the accidents to happen over and over.

With woven rugs, the foundation fibers are typically cotton. This means the wool fibers are tied around cotton warps. So pet urine (or vomit or #2) will penetrate the wool fibers – because this accident is hot and acidic – and will become absorbed by the cotton interior fibers. This means the accident you see is only the tip of the sewage iceburg.

This Chinese rug has much more urine absorbed within its foundation fibers.

Ideally, when you notice an accident has happened – you jump to action. These are your spills steps:

1) If there is anything to scoop up – scoop it up. Blot up what you can with a cotton towel.

2) Pour some club soda (or if you have no soda water – a 50/50 mixture of white vinegar and cool water) into a container. Use a sponge, wringing out the excess, and DAMPEN the affected area. Then blot with a cotton towel to pull out the urine or vomit or fecal matter.

3) Blot until you see nothing coming into the towel. Then take a hair dryer on warm (not hot) and dry the fibers. Ideally raise the rug up in this area so air flow is along both sides.

WARNINGS! If you see the rug dyes transfer into the towel, you need to stop getting the rug damp, and blot and dry as quickly as possible. If you get a woven rug too wet you will risk potential mildew and mold problems, so do not get the fibers WET, just damp. If you SCRUB wool instead of blot, you can potentially create fiber distortion/breaking.

The bigger problem with rugs comes when you allow repeated pet accidents on your rugs. The stains will be permanent, the odor strong, and long term exposure can lead to mildew and dry rot of the rug.

Besides of course the fact that this becomes an open pet toilet in your living space – which is not good for the health of you or your family.

Mildew growth on back of Persian rug with repeated pet urine activity - this is the stage before dry rot sets in.

The only way to remove the urine from the inside of these rugs is to have them completely immersed in a plant specializing in washing rugs. The rug needs a thorough bath.

Cleaning rugs like these in the home only surface cleans them. It gets the top fibers cleaner, but does nothing to the inside fiber contamination.

They may spray some disinfectant, or deodorizer on the rug to make it smell “good” – but smelling good does not mean it is CLEAN. This is not any different than spraying fragrance on a diaper, and then expecting it to be used again. It may not smell bad – but you know that would be completely unacceptable and unhealthy.

Proper cleaning presents a catch 22 though, because what is needed is a good thorough soak for an extended period of time. You soak it first in white vinegar (acetic acid) to penetrate the inside of the rug to liquify and help remove the urine salts from the inside of the rug – many times you can see the water literally run gold from pet problems.

However, pet urine stains, if they have sat on the rug for longer than a week, can create a break in the dye bond to the wool and can make even very colorfast rugs “bleed” during the wash.

The catch 22 is that because there are pet urine stains, the rug needs to be soaked completely… but because there are pet urine spills the dyes will likely bleed if the rug is washed, no matter what a professional cleaner does to stabilize dyes during cleaning.

It is important, if you are a rug cleaner, to inform your client of this, and to make sure they are informed of these four things: 1) the rug must be given a wet wash to remove the odor causing contaminants from the inside of the rug; 2) that pet urine stains are permanent; 3) that even though white vinegar will be used to remove the urine salts, and stabilize dyes during the wash process, pet affected areas are likely to bleed despite all of your best efforts; and 4) that pet urine causes damage to rugs that devalues them permanently.

If a rug can be cleaned properly soon after any significant pet accident, you can avert permanent damage. If a rug cleaning cannot happen quickly, then the steps outlined in this post can help you minimize the damage.

It might be a good idea to either toss some cheaper rugs over the top of your valuable ones during the hectic holidays, or roll them up until your company – and happy chaos – passes and your pets get back to being wonderfully well-behaved.

Happy New Year!

- Lisa

Technically “oriental” refers to “the East” (the Orient) and rugs woven over on the other side of this great planet of ours. Academics use “occidental rug” to refer to those rugs woven in the western hemisphere, such as Navajo rugs.

I know that technically I should distinguish between oriental and occidental – but I don’t. I’ve never used the term occidental with a client, ever. They think I’m saying accidental rug with a pompous “oh” instead of the “ax” – so I keep it simple. Hand woven is “oriental rug” to me – and this is what I see in my head:

Loom from Castle Cleaning in Colorado.

I see the hand work that has twisted every single knot around those warp threads. I see the sheared wool, the dyeing process, the spinning process, the months (and sometimes years) of creation time.

I see a piece of someone’s life in front of me. A part of someone’s soul in a piece of art now place in your home for you to enjoy.

A hand woven rug makes me smile.

Machine woven rugs? Tufted rugs with material backing? They just have no heart to me. No soul. No love.

I have loved many, many wonderful rugs, brand new and some centuries old. None have been machine made. It’s like really loving GOOD food, and having to go to McDonald’s – there is just no pleasure in a knock off. At least not for me. It’s one of the joys – and curses – of knowing so much about a craft … when you really appreciate the art, you are drawn to the well-made pieces.

And I appreciate those who in a world full of commodity, cheap, machine-made product, will choose to buy a hand crafted rug. I appreciate those who value and buy a REAL rug. (I am still very nice to everyone who buys area rugs also – I just enjoy the hand woven rugs more.)

I received an email today from a peer who received a brand new hand woven rug from a client. She has had the rug a few days, and noticed that a damp cloth makes the red dye transfer to it. The peer was asking me for some advice – here is the rug from Iran:

Wool hand woven rug.

With brand new rugs, it is possible that they have a certain amount of “excess dye” in the fibers. This washes away in the first cleaning (some rugs are washed thoroughly before being sold and these do not have this situation).

If the rug is in an area where there may be spills, then they might pose a problem, because the dye may move and migrate to other areas. So this is what I suggested to my peer. Not to wash it fully, but to rinse the tips of the fibers.

Rugs, especially oriental rugs, should be given a bath when cleaned. This is the recommended thorough way of cleaning rugs. This should be done in a rug plant, because thorough dusting, the wash, and complete drying are required. Many rugs have dyes that are not colorfast, so these professionals are trained to stabilize the dyes during the cleaning process.

But with this rug, a bath is not needed. The issue is not soil, but excess dye. If you are a professional rug cleaner, these are the steps I’d recommend:

1) Use your Drimaster tool. This is the PERFECT tool because you want to be able to rinse the fibers thoroughly and IMMEDIATELY extract without the water moving to other areas and potentially making the red dye move to neighboring areas. (If you do not own a Drimaster tool you can find it on the Hydramaster site.)

2) You can adjust the amount of water flow, and you can see the water through the viewer to see if it is red or simply clear. Make short strokes WITH the grain of the wool fibers several times, and then turn off the water flow and follow up with a dry stroke to pick up any remaining moisture.

(To determine the GRAIN of the fibers, pet the rug as you would your dog. You will know when you are going WITH the grain or AGAINST it – and you always want your tool strokes or brushing strokes to be WITH the grain.)

3) Keep the rug out flat, and dry it quickly. If you use a Dri-Eaz AirPath, it will dry in minutes.  Set it beside the rug rather than over it so as not to leave any impressions from the airmover legs.

4) Take a damp towel to verify that no more dye transfers as before.

It is not unusual to have “excess dye” in the fibers of a new rug. This wool is very thoroughly dyed those beautiful colors, and just as with new sweaters in the laundry, some dye comes off in the first cleaning. (Just as your grandmother used to add vinegar to her wash to help stabilize and protect neighboring fabrics from absorbing this migrated dye – many rug plants use vinegar also as a rug dye stabilizing agent in their facilities. Old world ways in new world operations.)

The reason I like this “surface rinse” of a brand new rug is because it takes away that excess dye (which might give a rug owner problems if there is a spill), but also because even though the rug is “new” it is not necessarily clean. Dust settles in the store, some have people who walk on them in the store, and the shipping and transport from overseas is not necessarily the cleanest experience. The thorough rinse can remove surface contaminants as well as that excess dye.

If you are a proud owner of a brand new wonderfully hand woven rug, and you find a little dye coming off on a damp towel and you are concerned – now you know what to do.  A surface rinse with a new piece of technology that keeps the rug from having to be given a bath just to remove a little bit of extra dye.

Some rugs last for centuries – so they are not a part of our lives; we are a part of theirs. I hope you enjoy your new (or old) woven rug for many years to come.

- Lisa

It was an energetic, and very knowledgeable group – great questions and dialogue back and forth.

And… one of the attendees brought us a “surprise” – a silk rug:

Here I am explaining the dangers of this silk rug.

This particular rug had a few issues that made it an interesting case study: 1) it had been cleaned several times with a dry-compound cleaning agent which had left a great deal of residue and yellowing in the ivory; 2) it had multiple pet stains and dye bleed of the blue in these areas; and 3) this rug is a BLEEDER – it tested “not colorfast” with our hot water quick test. (View my post on dye migration for the link to the video on how to properly test for colorfast versus fugitive dyes.)

We opted to stabilize the dyes with Bridgepoint’s Dye-Loc, then used a Hydramaster Dri-master hand tool to control the amount of moisture during rinsing the shampoo and extracting , and followed up with using the Dri-Eaz Airpath to speed up the dry time significantly.

Blue is one of the most difficult colors to strip in a rug to try to correct prior damage. Our goal was to clean the rug safely, without causing additional damage to the textile. This gave us the opportunity to show how to handle a rug “bleeder” and also how to handle silk rugs in general – from cleaning to grooming.  Silk rugs tend to create more problems than wool rugs for professional cleaners, so giving them a proper good bath for cleaning often is not an option.

This was not an investment grade rug at all, but it was a good example of a commonly found silk blend rug in homes in this region. And it gave us the opportunity to talk about damage inevitably caused by pets on rugs, and some tricks of the trade to help you have success in cleaning rugs with multiple “danger” signs.

Off to Atlanta next… we’ve sold out the house (again!) – should be another fantastic group.

Thanks to Interlink for being our host, and to all of the professionals who took their day to come learn with us.

- Lisa

Filthy rug may be hiding SECRET DANGERS!

What could be lurking here? Plenty of pre-existing dangers – old stains, old dye migration, old repairs, abrash, sunfade.

You could be the BEST rug care specialist in your city, and yet with this rug, you could be unable to catch any of these items above in your pre-inspection.  Why?  Because the rug is friggin’ FILTHY!

Couple things to point out – one is, when someone allows their rug to get really dirty, they don’t care about it.  They are putting off cleaning it because they don’t especially enjoy paying to have it cleaned. They don’t realize that the abrasive soil is cutting the fibers of this silk rug and is causing it to prematurely wear down.

People often falsely say that cleaning a rug causes damage – when actually NOT cleaning it causes damage.   Think about a little bit of sand and grit getting into the bottom of your shoe, and how that pokes, scratches, and hurts over time.  Put that grit into a rug that is walked on day in and day out, and can you imagine that on wool or silk fibers? Of course it causes damage.

If you have the rug improperly cleaned, for examples having a wool or silk rug steam cleaned at high heat – I’ll grant you that this cleaning would in fact damage the rug more than help it.  But properly cleaning – a wash – of a well made rug with strong dyes only helps it to last longer.

But back to the filthy rug.  What if this level of dirt was on top of this rug right here?

Red dye has bled on the top side of this rug only from an old spill.

If this rug was caked with dark gray soil as the rug at the beginning of the post is, you would likely not be able to see this damage until the rug was clean and it stuck out like a sore thumb.  Then the rug’s owner might incorrectly believe you created the damage with your wash.

(One tip for you – if your wash process has bled a rug, then it will have bled it ALL over the rug, and not just in one small isolated area. If you’ve made an error, it will show up throughout the rug.)

If a rug is heavily soiled, it is not within your power to do a proper pre-inspection.  That’s like having you do a home inspection but locking the door and not allowing you inside.  You cannot SEE the conditions.

This means a comment needs to be placed on the invoice that states “Due to extreme soiling, I am unable to note any pre-existing stains, dye migration, sunfade, or discolorations on this rug. I will use extreme care in cleaning this rug, but cannot be held responsible for any pre-existing conditions uncovered by my thorough cleaning process.”

If the rug owner refuses to release you from liability on this point, then I’d suggest you turn the job away. Clearly they have something to hide – literally. And rug owners who allow their rugs to get this soiled do not appreciate “clean” and do not appreciate those in the cleaning profession.

They tend to be the most demanding customers who will criticize the price, the turnaround time, and the results. Why? Because they resent the fact that they have to pay someone to clean up their dirt.

Clients who value clean, and strive for a healthy home, glady hire skilled professionals to deliver that service to their homes and their rugs. It is part of their routine to provide the best environment for themselves, their families, and their household investments from their flooring to their textiles.

It’s true that sometimes a homeowner may slip and let something get dirtier than they should have. How you’ll know if they are a good client to have will be how they respond to your waiver for a heavily soiled rug.  If the response is “of course, no problem” – the customer is a keeper.

If the answer is “no way” – then you need to thank them for letting you know that they are not someone you want to invest any time and effort into.  You can politely refer them to someone else, and thank them for keeping you from getting a nightmare customer-induced migraine.

- Lisa